by Mel Mcintyre

Created on: February 18, 2009

As Orwell's Animal Farm is a political allegory, the characters represent sections of communist Russia. The exceptional thing about Orwell's dystopian vision is that the representations work well in any dictatorial regime.

It's important to start with the pigs in Animal Farm. They represent the leading group in Animalism and their antics form the basis of Orwell's growing dissatisfaction with communism.

As with all political ideologies the original theory seems reasonable enough. And so it is with Major's vision. Major symbolizes two figures in history: Marx and Lenin. Major sets up the idea of revolution amongst the animals, but dies before he sees his ideas come to fruition. It's left to Snowball and Napoleon to put his ideas into practice. Lenin died soon after the birth of the Soviet Union leaving Trotsky (Snowball) and Stalin (Napoleon) to compete for leadership.

Snowball initially seems to thrive in the new regime. He comes up with plans like the building of the windmill; an idea that will help the animals be self-sufficient and ensure their survival. The other animals trust Snowball, who appears to embrace the notion of equality put forward by Old Major and is an excellent speaker. But his popularity with the other animals and his natural intelligence are his undoing. Napoleon is jealous of Snowball's success and zealous in guarding his own right to leadership.

In many ways Snowball represents other political systems that compete with communism and therefore have to be vilified for communism to survive. Napoleon exiles Snowball as Stalin exiled Trotsky. Napoleon then sets about demonizing Snowball so that, eventually, the other animals blame all their misfortunes on him.

This brings us to the last of the leaders amongst the pigs, Napoleon. Napoleon's name echoes that other Napoleon whose greed for power brought disaster in his attempt to invade Russia. Within the political allegory of Animal Farm, Napoleon represents Stalin in his use of fear tactics, rewriting of history and manipulation of policies to meet his own ends.

Napoleon does not have Snowball's intellect but has a basic intelligence that relies on cunning and manipulation of the weaker animals. He is capable of forethought as shown in his abduction and training of the puppies. He recognizes the skills of others and puts them to use in his favor. His character is shown in an irredeemably bad light by Orwell, suggesting that he feels Stalin was most to blame for the failure of Marxism.

Amongst those

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