ANIMAL FARM: 2

Allusions and references to actual history, geography and current science

  • The ousting of the Humans after the farmers forget to feed the animals – Russian Revolution of 1917 led to the removal of the Tsar after a series of social upheavals and wars that ultimately led to famine and poverty.
  • The refusal of the Humans to refer to Animal Farm by its new name (still calling it Manor Farm) may be indicative of the diplomatic limbo in which the Soviets existed following their early history.
  • Mr. Jones' last ditch effort to re-take the farm (The Battle of the Cowshed) – Russian Civil War in which the western capitalist governments sent soldiers to try to remove the Bolsheviks from power.
  • Napoleon's removal of Snowball – Stalin ’s removal of Leon Trotsky from power in 1927 and his subsequent expulsion.
  • Squealer constantly changing the commandments - This may refer to the constant line of adjustments to the communist theory by the people in power. Also, his lies to animals of past events they cannot remember refers to the revision of history texts to glorify Stalin during his regime.
  • After Old Major dies, his skull is placed on display on a tree stump. Similarly, Lenin's (whom Old Major is based on along with Karl Marx) embalmed body was put on display in Lenin's Tomb in Red Square postmortem, where it still remains.
  • Napoleon stealing Snowball’s idea for a windmill - The windmill can be considered a symbol of the Soviet Five-Year Plans, a concept developed by Trotsky and adopted by Stalin, who, after banning Trotsky from the Soviet Union, claimed them to be his idea. The failure of the windmill to generate the expected creature comforts and subsequent search for saboteurs is probably a reference to accusations and a show trial against British engineers who were working on electrification projects in the USSR .
  • Moses the raven leaving the farm for a while and then returning — Similar to the Russian Orthodox Church going underground and then being brought back to give the workers hope.
  • Boxer's motto, "Napoleon is always right" is strikingly similar to "Mussolini is always right" a chant used to hail Benito Mussolini during his rule of Italy from 1922 to 1943.
  • During the rise of Napoleon, he ordered the collection of all the hens' eggs. In an act of defiance, the Hens destroyed their eggs rather than give them to Napoleon — During Stalin's collectivization period in the early 1930s, many Ukrainian peasants burned their crops and farms rather than handing them over to the government.
  • Napoleon's mass executions, of which many were unfair for the alleged crimes — Stalin executed his political enemies for various crimes after they were tortured and forced to falsely confess.
  • The four pigs that go against Napoleon's will a comparable with the purged party members during the Great Purge such as Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev, Kamenev and many others.
  • Napoleon's replacement of the farm anthem "Beasts of England " with an inane composition by the pig poet Minimus ("Animal Farm, Animal Farm / Never through me / Shall thou come to harm") – In 1943, Stalin replaced the old national anthem "the Internationale " with "the Hymn of the Soviet Union ." The old internationale glorified the revolution and "the people." The original version of the Hymn of the Soviet Union glorified Stalin so heavily that after his death in 1953, entire sections of the anthem had to be replaced or removed. Orwell could have also been referring to Napoleon Bonaparte's banning of the French national hymn, La Marseillaise in 1799.
  • Napoleon's dealing with Mr. Frederick, who eventually betrays Animal Farm and destroys the windmill. Though Animal Farm repels the human attack, many animals are wounded and killed — Stalin’s Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany in 1939, which was later betrayed in 1941 when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union . Though the Soviet Union won the war, it came at a tremendous price of roughly 8.5-15 million Soviet soldiers (unconfirmed) and many civilians, coming to an incredible estimated 20 million dead, as well as the utter destruction of the Western Soviet Union and its prized collective farms which Stalin had created in the 1930s. The detonation of the windmill and the battle that ensued there could also be a reference to the Battle of Stalingrad . The selling of the farm's excess timber supply could represent the offering of raw materials to Germany from the Soviets in exchange for weapons of war.
  • Napoleon's later alliance with the humans — Stalin’s non-aggression pact with Hitler in the early years of WWII.
  • Napoleon's changing Animal Farm back to Manor — The Red Army ’s name was changed from the "Workers' and Peasants' Red Army" to the "Soviet Army" to appear as a more appealing and professional organization rather than an army of the common people.
  • Squealer may be an allegory of the Soviet Newspaper which Stalin often wrote many of the articles anonymously, to give the impression the country was far better off than it was.
  • The dogs may be an allegory to the NKVD (KGB), the elite police force who ruled by terror under Stalin's hand.

Boxer, in the allegory of the novel, directly relates to the working class who laboured under strenuous and exceedingly difficult conditions throughout the communist regime with the hope that their work would result in a more prosperous life further on in their future. Boxer represents this clearly at points when he utters such quotes as, "I Shall work harder," in response to any sort of difficulty.

In the context of the stors, this also allows Boxer to become a tool of propoganda to be used by Napoleon and his regime later on once Boxer has been murdered to pay for a crate of whisky for the pigs.

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Significance

The book is an allegory about the events following the revolution in the Soviet Union , and in particular the rise of Stalinism and the betrayal of the revolution which basically replaced dictatorship they had under a Monarchy for a dictatorship under communism .

Orwell wrote the book following his experiences during the Spanish Civil War which are described in another of his books, Homage to Catalonia . He intended it to be a strong condemnation of what he saw as the Stalinist corruption of the original socialist ideals, in which he believed and continued to believe after he saw a revolution betrayed, as in Spain. For the preface of a Ukrainian edition he prepared in 1947, Orwell describes what gave him the idea of setting the book on a farm.[2]

..I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge cart-horse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.

This Ukrainian edition was an early propaganda use of the book. It was printed to be distributed among the Soviet citizens of Ukraine who were just some of the many millions of displaced persons throughout Europe at the end of the Second World War. The American occupation forces did not appreciate these illegal presses, printing propaganda, and confiscated 1,500 copies of Animal Farm, handing them to the Soviet authorities. The politics in the book also affected Britain, with Orwell reporting that Ernest Bevin was "terrified"[3] that it may cause embarrassment if published before the 1945 general election .

In recent years the book has been used to compare new movements that overthrow heads of a corrupt and undemocratic government or organization, only to become corrupt and oppressive themselves over time as they succumb to the trappings of power and begin using violent and dictatorial methods to keep it. Such analogies have been used for many former African colonies such as Zimbabwe and Democratic Republic of Congo , whose succeeding African-born rulers were thought to be as corrupt or worse than the European colonists they supplanted.

The book also clearly ponders the question as to whether a focus of power and a concentration of power onto one singular person is healthy for a society. Furthermore, the beauty of the book allows the ending to be slightly ambiguous which means that the reader must decide his or her own mind as to what they think.

In addition, the book makes the reader ponder whether rebellion will eventually resort to a sort of dictatorship anyway and that particular power in society is merely part of human nature. This is clearly shown in the way that the pigs, through their own power, lack of equality and their domination, resort to the old regime of layers of power and a constant concentration of power at the top; this is exactly the same sytem that was expressed by George Orwell at the beginning of the book. Furthermore, the last line of the book accentuates this thought by the animals not being able to tell the difference between man and pig who represent both the old and new regime.

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British censorship and suppressed preface

During World War Two it became apparent to Orwell that anti-Russian literature was not something which most major publishing houses would touch — including his regular publisher Gollancz . One publisher he sought to sell his book to rejected it on the grounds of government advice — although the assumed civil servant who gave the order was later found to be a Soviet spy .[4]

Orwell originally prepared a preface which complains about British government suppression of his book, self-imposed British self-censorship and how the British people were suppressing criticism of the USSR, their World War II ally. "The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. ... [Things are] kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact." Somewhat ironically , the preface itself was censored and is not published with most copies of the book.[5] [6] [7] The beauty of George Orwell's (Eric Blair's) masterpiece has to be its diversity and structure to such a level that the book can be read by young children, and those looking for a light read, on surface level and, at the same time, a group of upper-school students or university students can also read the novel.

The allegory which is applied to the book allows it to be read on a variety of different levels and, whilst it can be read simply for the joy and intruige of reading it, it can also be admired for being extremely diverse and blunt in an extremely subtle way.

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Film versions

  • 1954 animated film - The book was the basis of an animated feature film in 1954 (Britain's first full-length animated movie), directed by John Halas and Joy Batchelor and quietly commissioned by the American CIA ,[8] which softened the theme of the story slightly by reducing the role of Moses, the character representing religion, and adding an epilogue, that occurs immediately after the novel's iconic concluding imagery is depicted, where the other animals successfully revolt against the pigs.
  • 1999 live-action film - There was also a live action film directed by John Stephenson, with voices by Kelsey Grammer as Snowball, Patrick Stewart as Napoleon, and Ian Holm as Squealer. Despite a few differences (such as completely different songs), the plot occasionally resembles that of the book. The film diverges from the book with an additional epilogue in which Jesse and several animals escape and return years later to a post-Napoleon era Animal Farm. This is an update which could be seen as an analogy to the fall of the Soviet Union.
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Cultural references

  • Pink Floyd 's 1977 album Animals was partially inspired by Animal Farm. It categorises people as pigs, dogs, or sheep. The songs are all deeply linked with Orwell's Animal Farm. The album cover has an image of Battersea Power Station which is also an image used in the film of 1984.
  • In an episode of Johnny Bravo ("Aunt Katie's Farm"), Johnny, while dressed in a pig costume, goes crazy and yells, "Four legs good! Two legs bad!" over and over.
  • The online game NationStates contains an imaginary pro-bicycle environmental group known as "Two Wheels Good, Four Wheels Bad."
  • Rappers Dead Prez released a song called "Animal in Man" off their debut LP, Let's Get Free , re-telling the story.
  • A song off Canadian band Protest the Hero 's debut CD A Calculated Use of Sound , called "Red Stars Over the Battle of the Cowshed" is presumably a reference to Animal Farm
  • Canadian rapper Buck 65 also used "Four legs good, two legs bad" in a remixed version of his song The Centaur, found on the ZeD compilation CD Live Off The Floor......
  • Metal band Clutch has a song entitled 'Animal Farm' on their self titled album Clutch .
  • The band Oingo Boingo 's song No Spill Blood from their Good For Your Soul album (later reprised on Boingo Alive and Farewell ) is a reference to the story.
  • In a Futurama episode titled Mother's Day , a robotic greeting card tells Bender that "in the glorious robot workers' paradise, there will be no liquor !". This appears to be a reference to Snowball the pig, telling Mollie the horse that there will be no sugar or ribbons after the great animal revolution. Both Mollie and Bender are unconvinced by these statements, and appear to be supporters of the status quo due to the luxury that both of them have in their current arrangements.
Animal Farm v d e
By George Orwell
Main Characters Old Major | Napoleon | Snowball | Squealer
Secondary
Characters		 Frederick | Pilkington | Jones | Boxer
Battles Battle of the Cowshed | Battle of the Windmill
Songs Beasts of England | Comrade Napoleon
Miscellaneous Animalism | Seven Commandments


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References

  1. ^ a b Cliff's notes , 39.
  2. ^ Preface to the Ukrainian Edition of Animal Farm
  3. ^ Letter to Herbert Read , 18 August 1945 .
  4. ^ Taylor, D.J. (2003). Orwell: The Life. ISBN 0-8050-7473-2 . p. 337 Writing to Leonard Moore, a partner in the literary agency of Christy & Moore, publisher "Jonathan Cape explained that the decision had been taken on the advice of a senior official in the Ministry of Information. Such flagrant anti-Soviet bias was unacceptable: and the choice of pigs as the dominant class was thought to be especially offenisive. The `important official' was, or so it may reasonably be assumed, a man named Peter Smollett , later unmasked as a Soviet agent."
  5. ^ Orwell, George (August 26 1995). "Triumph of the Herd Instinct; Animal Farm, the savage satire against Stalin, became a worldwide best-seller but publication was delayed by sensitivity to Britain's Russian ally" . The Guardian: 28.
  6. ^ Orwell, George (August 18 1995). "The freedom of the press, rediscovered preface to 'Animal Farm'" . New Statesman & Society 8 (366): 11. ISSN: 0954-2361.
  7. ^ George Orwell: The Freedom of the Press . Archive.org. Retrieved on May 12, 2006 .
  8. ^ CIA, Movie Producer
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