Review & Analysis of Animal Farm by George Orwell
Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
Length: 3 hrs and 13 mins
Release date: 12-15-99
Original publish date: 17th August 1945 (1984 book published in 1949)
*Listen to a sample here: Animal Farm by George Orwell on audible.com
So the most uttered line I head from this book is “All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others”
And with the added notion, “well of course it’s all about communism”
Turns out… after having read the book… that’s actually not the case.
Story
For those of you that have not heard of the book… or only known it by title, the book is about a group of animals living on a farm that…spurred on from 1 intelligent pig’s dream for a better world, eventually lead a revolt against an ‘oppressive’ farmer and end up starting a new society where ‘everyone will be equal’ and where they will work for themselves instead of for someone else.
The pigs, as the more intelligent animals end up leading the ‘ideology’ of the society and interpreting it as will be apparently be good for the rest of the animals and ‘improving on it’ as they see fit, to continue to be on path as each stage they complete they face other issues that need to be overcome.
Parallels to the real world
While yes, you can draw the parallels to communism, because essentially that is what is proposed at the start by the character ‘Old Major’ ( a prize winning and wise old boar).
A ‘dream he has had in which all animals live together with no human beings to oppress or control them.’ That one day there will exist an opportunity for revolution, that it may happen by accident or by force, but it will allow us to gain control of our own destiny.
Old Major here is paralleling Karl Marx who along with Friedrich Engels was responsible for publishing ‘The Communist Manifesto’ – outlining communism, the final stage of societal development and how the process might allow people to get there.
By the way, Marx also outlined the 6 stages of societal development:
1.primitive communism –ie. hunter gatherers
2. Slave society
3. Feudalism
4. Capitalism
5. Socialism
6. Communism
His Communist Manifesto was meant to reference his earlier works.
The point was, that Marx was a philosopher. He understood the history of where humans were and how they interacted and believed (up for debate of course) he could predict where societal development was going.
The character Old Major (the wise old boar) is meant to directly parallel Marx.
At the same time of prophesizing the revolution and new society of the animals, Old Major teaches the rest of the animals the song ‘The Beasts of England’ where his vision is lyrically described so that all members can understand to goals and can participate.
-Much like the propaganda songs of communist nations, think Red Army of Mao, and of Stalin.
But also think what could be though as propaganda songs of America like and I’m sure there’s others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iiUG5sDo1U
After Old Major died peacefully in his sleep, 3 junior pigs took over his message. Napoleon, Snowball and Squealer. They formulate Old Major’s plan into a doctrine to be implemented and call it ‘Animalism’.
Napoleon closely resembles Joseph Stalin, however as the story progresses it becomes evident that he in fact represents many of the political tyrants that have emerged throughout history, his namesake of course that being of the French leader Napoleon, who betrayed the democratic principles on which he rode to power, arguably becoming as great a dictator as the aristocrats whom he ousted.
Squealer is a pig who take the message that the leader says and manipulates it to seem more appealing to the public. “Well, when he says this…. What he actually means of course is this…” Meaning that Squealer is the pig that is a smooth talking bastard and can justify the actions or statements made by the leader to his less thinking constituents.
In other analyses, its stated that ‘Orwell explored how politicians manipulate language in an age of mass media.’
Snowball is the more idealistic of the 3 and fervently stands true to Old Majors originally thinking and thus tries to improve Animal Farm for the better and even tries to spread the message to other farms about what they can achieve with similar thinking.
In this, he is liked to Leon Trotsky.
His idealism is his downfall against the tyrannical brutality that Napoleon has as his disposal, and is eventually made out to be the enemy.
Just like the real Trotsky was famous for being the founder and commander of the Red Army, the 1st People’s Commissioner of Foreign Affairs and was in fact a major figure in shaping the Soviet Union. But just like Snowball against Napoleon, Trotsky led a failed rebellion against the principles of Stalin and was eventually removed from all aspects of power, demonised and thrown out of Russia to continue to be vilified after the fact, and then blamed for internal problems inside animal farm, acting as a convenient scapegoat whenever Napoleon’s policies or actions failed.
After a while (in Animal Farm) Napoleon made the case that Snowball had never been with the society of now, and had always been an enemy. Paralleling Soviet censorship at the time of Stalin. 
Nikolai Yezhov being the person removed in this photo. However, Trotsky was also removed, as were many others. This article is very interesting explaining the point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_Soviet_Union
Snowball (Trotsky) makes great strides at the start, teaching the animals to read and outlining 7 main points to which the animals to adhere to.
- Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
- Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
- No animal shall wear clothes.
- No animal shall sleep in a bed.
- No animal shall drink alcohol.
- No animal shall kill any other animal.
- All animals are equal.
Of course, as the book goes on these main principles for which society was based on become perverted as a tyrant takes over.
In stages it becomes:
- Becomes ~ No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets. (meaning the bed is ok-meaning that pigs can live inside the house)
- Becomes ~ No animal shall drink alcohol to excess. (meaning some alcohol is ok)
- Becomes ~ No animal shall kill any other animal without cause. (which of course invites much vagueness and interpretation as to ‘what is due cause?’ –it is what the leader says it is)
Eventually as principles are rewritten to the advantage of the tyrannical leaders the 7th one becomes ~ All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Thus the famous line that anyone who was made to read this book in school remembers.
Thus at the conclusion of the book, the pigs (ruling class, tyrannical leaders) have embraced wearing clothes, and all former principles have been revoked including education for the other animals, and things turn out just as they were before but with one tyrannical leader being disposed for another.
The final quote of ‘The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.’
Enforcing all these rules, in case one member of society remembered how it was originally, or could still read, was the combined effort of:
1. The manipulation of the mass media (Squealer’s job) mass media being the sheep on Animal Farm.
2. The degradation of society’s education combined with the setting of goals that everyone can get behind, allow them to forget about inconsistencies and perceived or real unfairness and propaganda to focus on goals and blame scapegoats as reasons for internal failures.
3. The gradual change of principles to slowly provide historical evidence and therefore justification for actions. (This is what Soviet Russia did during Stalin, and what China still does even now –see South China Sea maps, Tibetan history, 1989 massacre coverup)
4. The addition of a Secret Police, for which things are enforced if the others fail.
In the book this is done by Napoleon (Stalin) taking the puppies away from the dogs and raising them in his propaganda tainted world to protect him rather than to protect the people.
Also paralleling the fact that China’s army even now protects the Chinese government, not necessarily the people of China. As incredibly evident in 1989. That the leader of the Communist party of China, is in fact the head of the Armed Services. There is much research to be done into that, but not going into detail about that now.
It is incredibly ironic though, that Animal Farm is legally sold within China, when you can find clear and direct links to how the government operates with what happens on Animal Farm. I believe they haven’t censored it because either they believe the citizens are too influenced by their own propaganda to ever see the relation, or that they think that in censoring it it will admit blame to some degree.
Although that of course hasn’t stopped them from censoring other books or events in the past.
The only difference is that this is a ‘fiction’ story rather than ‘non-fiction’.
What is the story really about?
Essentially its about the process of perversion of idealistic philosophies in governing a country.
Yes, the ideology in this book is initially Communism, however that’s only the victim of the story, not what the story is actually about.
The real point is on Totalitarianism, or Tyranism and the fact that bullies are able to rise to power if left unchecked by an educated society.
It is NOT that Communism is inherently able to be corrupted as I believe much of the nation’s prescribing this book to Western high schools would have you believe… which in a way is their own propaganda. Anti-communist, in this way.
But ANY system is able to be corrupted.
In the case of Napoleon, where the Tyrannical leader’s (Animal Farm) namesake is taken from Napoleon was able to corrupt the French Democracy.
Therefore, as history shows both Democracy AND Communism were able to be corrupted by tyrannical leaders.
Perverting the ideology
What Marx described in his 6 stages of societal development, and I think he might very well be right in this… (because let’s not forget he didn’t just pull it out of his arse…he did some serious research and discussed with some great thinkers at the time) …. Was that Communism was supposed to result as an end consequence from society PROGRESSING through the various stages.
A society then, through his thinking couldn’t just go from Capitalism straight to Communism as the United States of America seem so scared about. Or that they shouldn’t just go from Feudalism straight to Communism, because essentially the society isn’t aware enough of itself. It has to be awaked, lived through the bad experiences of how not to do things, how to improve things to come to a realisation of how things should actually be.
The failings I believe Orwell somewhat alluded to is that at each stage, especially those which aim to jump stages or several stages… there will be chances of corruption by tyrannical governments/ people that will perverse the idealistic thinking and repurpose it in a way that they get what they want… which usually means at the detriment of the rest of society.
In fact, every time throughout history that this massive leap has been taken… it has resulted in a tyrannical government… not the actual ‘supposed aim’ of Communism.
Therefore, what existed in Stalinist Russia, or what exists in North Korea or even in today’s China is not Communism. Also, even that Communism shouldn’t be blamed for the atrocities that happen supposedly under the banner of it during these times.
It wasn’t Communism that killed millions of people during Stalinist Russia, it was the perversion of a tyrannical leader, that rode the wave of ‘communist revolution’ to get to where he wanted to be.
It wasn’t the thinking of Communism in China that was responsible for the deaths of millions of Chinese people, it was the irresponsible policies decisions of Mao and his close collaborators that didn’t take into account the very important and obvious Chinese traditional beliefs of ‘Face’ and less important but still just as prevalent issue of corruption. Not researching policy and implementing it anyway…. Was surely not the greatest idea either.
North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia.. again.. both rose to power under the guise of Communism but in effect were Tyrants that perverted the cause for their own benefit.
Should the American people and Democracy or even Capitalism (but the answer is probably yes here) be held accountable for the atrocities the USA committed in the Vietnam war? The invasion of several South America, Central American countries, plus the middle eastern countries etc.? No. It’s not Democracy’s fault. The average person that has a stake in the country doesn’t believe they should have done half those things…. Because that’s what all those protests were about, but it happens anyway. It is the perversion of a system, the perversion of a process by the tyrants at the top.
And in fairness to the dicks at the top…of the American system… if it wasn’t for Capitalism and the desire to get more and more money at the expense of everyone else… I doubt there would be desire for such invasions of other countries. But Tyrants are tyrants no matter what.
The point is that Marx stipulated it worked in stages. Feudalism to Communism fails, Capitalism to Communism Fails. Feudalism to Socialism fails.
But, Feudalism to Capitalism to Socialism has worked so far. Look at Norway, Sweden, Australia, even France, Germany and the UK to some extents.
Sure these countries are not fully Socialist, but they are getting there.
America though…. Oh no… they are fully Capitalist. Probably coming from their propaganda that Socialism = Communism and that they have so many hypocrisies in their country. Abortion is not a choice but murder, by shooting fully grown adults with guns is acceptable. Preaching about Jesus and looking after people yet simultaneously allowing homeless people to die under bridges due to lack of social security and health care…. not exactly the system other countries are lining up to replicate. Or, they are at least trying to move past this and learn from not just their own mistakes but America’s as well.
Recommendation for the book
Thoroughly recommend that you read this book as a young adult or even as an adult.
I really believe that if you were subjected to reading this book by your school or even country growing up as required reading, then you may have been conditioned to interpreting the book as the school or country wanted you to interpret it as. Ie. Against communism, and thinking the book was all about communism.
If this is the case, then I thoroughly recommend a re-read.
If you’ve heard of the book… and you should have… it’s pretty famous. Then I would definitely recommend reading it. Keep an open mind. Decide for yourself what is was about, see if you can reach other parallels in what you’ve seen of the world and don’t let others influence you.
Who I wouldn’t really recommend it for – Children. It could be read of course just as an interesting experiment… but provided that they are not subjected to any outside opinions and that the conclusions they come to are their own.
However, it should be a repeat listen later in life, because at that age a child’s age is everything in their immediate vicinity, which obviously doesn’t include other countries domestic policies, international relations, societal development, nor world history.
Then again, maybe a story about pigs and animals living on a farm is far more enjoyable without the sobering thought of rampant corruption in today’s world that adults have to deal with.
I’ve had enough adulting for one day.
Extra reading (if you are interested…..or can be bothered)
Marx’s Theory of history (Wikipedia)
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