This Resource is for Year 9 English students studying the novella ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell as an analytical text response for the English curriculum in Victoria.

Historical Context

Animal Farm by George Orwell was written between 1943-44 during World War II. It was an era of totalitarianism in which powerful European countries were under the control of dictators such as Adolf Hitler Fuhrer of Germany, Benito Mussolini Leader of Italy, and Joseph Stalin General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Orwell drew strongly from Russian history of the 1917 Russian Revolution and other repressive totalitarian regimes to write his novella.

Satire and Allegory

Not published until 1945, Animal Farm is both a satire [using humour to criticise] on equality, how power corrupts and an allegory [metaphor/fable] on communism, the 1917 Russian Revolution and the brutal Stalinist period which followed. Orwell himself explained the novella as “the history of a revolution that went wrong”.

Failure of Communism or a Fairy-Tale

The novella can be seen as the historical analysis of the failure of communism or merely a fairy-tale where barnyard animals rebel to drive out humans and attempt to rule the farm themselves on the basis of equality free from their master’s tyranny. The animals seem to have achieved a utopian sort of communism where each animal would work according to his capacity, respecting the needs of others. Unfortunately, the venture failed when a power-hungry pig, Napoleon, (representing Joseph Stalin) becomes a ruthless totalitarian dictator.

Warning of Absolute Power of a Totalitarian System

While the animals cling to the idea they are their own masters of the farm, the fairy-tale does not have a happy ending. Power has turned the elite pigs from simple ‘comrades’ to tyrants who walk on two legs like humans and carry whips. Through propaganda and brainwashing the pigs change the crucial rule of their ‘Seven Commandments’ from “all animals are equal” to “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”. The 7^th Commandment is emblematic of Orwell’s belief that the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia merely replaced one capitalist class system with another hierarchy of power as a warning to all mankind against the absolute power of a totalitarian system.

Animal Farm as an Allegory

Animal Farm as an allegory means that the story, situations, and characters stand for other characters and events so as to make a point about them. The main action of Animal Farm stands for the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the early years of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. ‘Animalism’ is really communism and ‘Manor Farm’ is Russia. The setting of the farm is a dystopia which is an imagined world that is opposite to a utopia, an ideal place or state.

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