Animal Farm, by George Orwell

 

Animal Farm

Animal Farm was rejected by several publishers during World War II because the allegory was too obvious — too obviously critical of Stalin, too obviously likely to embarrass a current British ally. Orwell, who had seen the Spanish Civil War's idealism ground into factional betrayal, found this caution representative of exactly the intellectual cowardice his novel was about. He published it in 1945, and it has not required editorial defense since.

The setup is clean as a fable: the animals of Manor Farm, inspired by the dying Old Major's vision of a world without human exploitation, drive out the farmer and establish a system of collective self-governance called Animalism. The Seven Commandments are written on the barn wall. 'All animals are equal.' The pigs, being the most intelligent, naturally assume organizational leadership. This, Orwell signals immediately, is where the trouble begins.

Napoleon is Stalin without requiring any footnote, which is simultaneously the novel's strength and its limitation. The allegory is so direct that readers who know their Soviet history will find themselves ahead of the narrative at every turn. But Orwell's intention was not to mystify; he wanted to make the pattern of revolutionary corruption clear enough that anyone, including those who had been taken in by Soviet propaganda, could recognize it.

Squealer — the propagandist pig who can turn any fact into any interpretation, who adjusts the memory of the past to suit the requirements of the present — is perhaps the most immediately applicable of Orwell's creations. His technique is recognizable: begin with a version of events that is slightly wrong, repeat it with authority, adjust the historical record, and trust that the combination of fear and fatigue will prevent the audience from maintaining its own counter-narrative.

Boxer, the cart horse who gives everything he has to the farm's work and believes in Napoleon with the uncritical faith of the genuinely good, is Orwell's most painful figure. His motto — 'I will work harder' and 'Napoleon is always right' — is the attitude that makes revolutions possible and betrayals of revolutions inevitable. He is the person a corrupt system depends on most and rewards least.

The final image of the novel — the animals looking through the farmhouse window at the pigs and the humans, unable to tell which is which — is one of literature's most efficient endings. Everything that needed to be said has been said, and it has been said simply enough that the simplicity itself is the argument.

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