Animal Farm By George Orwell

Imagine you are a preschool teacher, and one day all of your kids join forces against you. They push you out of your own classroom, and make up their own system of ruling. It sounds crazy, right? This is what happens in Animal Farm, a novel written by George Orwell, but portraying animals on a farm. However, the story isn’t just about what meets the eye. In addition to depicting the story of a farm gone wrong, Animal Farm is an allegory which represents the people that lived and events that happened during Stalinist Russia. The book describes how the animals started out as an equal society, and ended with complete tyranny under the rule of the pigs. Animal Farm was always doomed to fail, because it had limited resources, a lack of intelligence
He put several rules in place under a system of beliefs called Animalism, and he instructed all animals to follow them. He said, “No animal must ever live in a house, or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes, or drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco, or touch money, or engage in trade. All the habits of Man are evil.” (Pg. 11) These rules became part of a larger set of rules called “The Seven Commandments” which were created after Old Major died. At first, the animals on the farm were able to sustain themselves quite successfully with the crops they planted, while following the commandments. “All through the summer the work of the farm went like clockwork. The animals were happy as they had never conceived to be. Every mouthful of food was an acute positive pleasure, now that it was truly their own food, produced by themselves and for themselves, not doled out to them by a grudging master. With the worthless parasitical human beings gone, there was more for everyone to eat.” (Pg. 28) Since everyone was being fed and kept healthy, there was nothing for the animals to be worried about at the time. However, as time passed and the pigs began making
In order to have a well-running society, the citizens must be educated enough so they cannot be easily manipulated by their leaders, should they attempt to rise up and take over. “None of the other animals on the farm could get further than the letter A. It was also found that the stupider animals, such as the sheep, hens, and ducks, were unable to learn the Seven Commandments by heart.” (Pg. 33) Since most of the animals were not smart enough to understand the Seven Commandments, which dictated their lives at the farm, the pigs could easily change them without notice by word of mouth. “It was about this time that the pigs suddenly moved into the farmhouse and took up their residence there. Again the animals seemed to remember that a resolution against this had been passed in the early days, and again Squealer was able to convince them that this was not the case. It was absolutely necessary, he said, that the pigs, who were the brains of the farm, should have a quiet place to work in.” (Pg. 66) This manipulation of the commandments happened a second time, although it was a much more serious issue. “When the terror caused by the executions died down, some of the animals remembered-or thought they remembered-that the Sixth Commandment decreed “No animal shall kill any other animal.” And though no one cared to mention it in the hearing of the