by Shane Bombardieri

Created on: June 14, 2008

"Animal farm," written by George Orwell begins with a meeting between all the farm animals in the barn. Old Major a prize winning bore proposes a rebellion against their human oppressors. The revolt against the humans occurs surprisingly soon, the humans are driven off the land and the animals are free. Three young pigs, Napoleon, Squealer and Snowball take command of the new society and formulate the main principals by which the animals must live their life. These principles or the seven commandments opposed everything the humans did. From then on the animals control the farm, they work for themselves and everything the produce and harvest is for themselves. Snowball acts fairly to all the animals, most of the time and they respect him, he leads from the front in the battle the humans provoke to reclaim the farm. Napoleon later, orders attack dogs to chase snowball away to assume the unchallenged role as leader and treats the inferior animals with disrespect, slaughters all who oppose him, re wrights many of the animalism philosophies and commandments to decriminalise the treacherous actions of him and the other pigs. Napoleon rewrites history to portray snowball as a villain and begins to act more and more like a human which is strictly forbidden in the laws of animalism. Squealer, an extremely intelligent pig is constantly able to justify such actions. As the remainder of the animals watch the pigs entertain and ally with other human farmers they find they can no longer differentiate between the pigs and the men.

There are a number of themes present in the novel animal farm. These include class division, abuse of power and language and the corruption of communist ideas.

The corruption of communist ideals is a strong theme present in animal farm. Animal farm is not just a fable about an animal uprising, it conveys a strong connection to past events that took place prior to George Orwell publication of animal farm, the Russian revolution. Through Animal farm George Orwell criticises the communist regime that he saw spreading through Russia at that time.

The original initiative behind the animals rebellion was to make all animals equal (thus a communist society) and to eliminate their human oppressors. However over time the founding principals of "animalism" disintegrate, as did the socialist ideals of the Russian revolution. The pigs turn to violent government, unfairness and adopt nearly all Mr. Jones's traits and harsh mistreatments of the animals, thus transforming

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>