Animal Farm: a Story Based on Communism

Category: Animal Farm
Last Updated: 26 Mar 2020
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The novel “Animal Farm” is a story based on communism, and revolves around the Russian revolution and the Soviet Union, showing this by the animal’s feelings, emotions and actions of communism eventually becoming corrupt. The novel is written by George Orwell and is told by a narrator in third person, and shows how communism operates and reflects upon the characters. The main characters in Animal Farm would make a list of: Napoleon (the big fat pig), Old Major (the boar), Snowball (Napoleon’s best friend, the white pig), Squealer (Napoleon’s side kick, the pig), boxer (the horse) and Benjamin (the donkey) as the rest being pigs and sheep etc.

Napoleon would be the perfect specimen for being the key character to reveal George Orwell’s important warning or theme, which is that power, corrupts. Old major, gathers the animals of the Manor Farm for a meeting in the big barn. He tells them of a dream he has had in which all animals live together with no human beings to oppress or control them. He tells the animals that they must work toward such a paradise, and teaches them a song called “Beasts of England,” in which his dream vision is lyrically described. The animals greet Major’s vision with great enthusiasm.

When he dies only three nights after the meeting, three younger pigs, Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer, formulate his key principles into a philosophy called Animalism. Belatedly one night, the animals manage to overpower the farmer Mr. Jones in a battle, virtually forcing him to leave. They rename the property Animal Farm from Manor Farm and dedicate themselves to achieving Major’s dream. The carthorse Boxer devotes himself to the cause with particular fanaticism, committing his great strength to the success of the farm and adopting as a delicate maxim the support “I will work harder. Originally, Animal Farm prospers. Snowball is ever so determine to teach the animals to read, and Napoleon is the head of a group of youthful puppies to educate them in the ethics of Animalism. When Mr Jones shows unannounced to fight back for his farm, the animals defeat him once again, in what comes to be known as the Battle of the Cowshed, and take the farmer’s abandoned gun as a token of their victory. As time leads on, nevertheless, Napoleon and Snowball gradually hedge over the future of the farm, and they commence to find it hard with each other for power and influence amid the farm.

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Snowball concocts a scheme to build an electricity-generating windmill, except Napoleon firmly opposes the plan. When the meeting aroused for the vote on whether to take up the task, Snowball astounds everyone one with his speech. Even though Napoleon gives only a brief rejoin, he suddenly made a strange noise, and nine attack dogs, the puppies that Napoleon had confiscated in order to “educate”, rupture into the barn and hound Snowball from the farm. Napoleon ends up assuming leadership of Animal Farm while declaring to that will be the end for any meeting.

From there on, he asserts, the pigs alone will make the decisions now onwards for the good of everyone. Napoleon ends up shifting his mind about the windmill and especially Boxer, and of course with all the animals going along with it, to devote their efforts to completing it. The windmill ended up falling down from a storm. The human farmers in the area thought that the animals made the walls too thin, due to the end result. Napoleon claims that Snowball came back to sabotage the windmill.

He stages a great wash out during which animals who allegedly participates in Snowball’s great plan. In other words any animal who opposes Napoleon’s uncontested leadership, convene direct death at the teeth of the attack dogs. With his leadership not answered (Boxer has taken up a second maxim, Napoleon always being correct. Napoleon begins growing his powers, rewriting history to make Snowball a villain. Napoleon begins to act more like a human being, sleeping in a bed, drinking whisky, and engaging in trade farmers.

The initial Animalist principles exactly forbade such activities, but Squealer, Napoleon’s propagandist, justifies the actions to the others, whilst convincing that Napoleon is a handy leader and makes everything better for everyone, despite the fact that the common animals are cold, hungry, and pushed too far. A neighboring farmer called Mr Frederick scams some timber and then attacks the farm and dynamites the windmill, in saying that the repair was expensive.

After the demolition of the windmill, a slanting battle, when boxer cops major wounds. The animals rout the farmers, but Boxer’s injuries weakened him. When he falls whilst working on the windmill. All of a sudden, Boxer is nowhere to be found. According to Squealer, Boxer is in peace after being taken to the hospital, admiring the Rebellion with Boxers very last breath. In realism, Napoleon has sold his most loyal and long suffering worker to a glue maker in order to earn money for whisky.

As time passes on the farm, the pigs become and eventually act like human beings likewise, walking upright, carrying whips, and wearing clothes. In the long run, the seven principles of Animalism, known as the Seven Commandments and decorated on the side of the barn, ends up being reduced to a single principle reading, “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”. Napoleon entertains a human farmer named Mr. Pilkington at a dinner and declares his intent to ally himself with the human farmers against the laboring classes of both the human and animal communities.

Eventually Animal Farm is returned to the name being Manor Farm, claiming that Manor Farm is correct. Looking through the farmhouse window, the common animals can no longer figure for who are the pigs or the human beings. Animal Farm is mainly famous in the West as a stinging critique of the history and rhetoric of the Russian Revolution. Retelling the story of the emergence and development of Soviet communism in the form of an animal fable.

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Animal Farm: a Story Based on Communism. (2018, May 01). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/animal-farm-a-story-based-on-communism/

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