Animal Farm Preview

Animal Farm

When story-lines of novels are used to make movies, many of the details from the books are left out making the movie less "effective" and will lack details that will modify the course of the events. In the case of Animal farm, the same exact mistake happens: to name a few changes from novel to movie before I get into the main topic, many of the characters have either a different role or completely inexistent; also many of the events don't correspond to the ones in the original novel making the story slightly change or entirely different.

To start with, the role of Jesse is highly important in the movie because she is the narrator and for such reason the whole story-line is seen from her point of view. The importance of the character of Clover is greatly reduced for she is seen only a few times while in the book she plays a leading role as she expresses her point of view multiple times too. One last notable change is noticeable when the roles of Mr Pilkington and Mr Whymper are swapped because it was Whymper that made business with the pigs, not Pilkington.

Furthermore, some scenes in the movie are added to the original story to make it look more interesting but also lead the story to a different ending: at the end of the movie we see Jesse and the other animals running away from the farm and the walls of Napoleon's farm crumbling down; this ending wasn't told in the novel but serves as a post reference to Stalin's soviet rule coming crashing down and opening the gates between East and West Berlin. The whole part of the book where we see the Pigs imposing forced labor to the farm animal is completely unpresent and instead a propaganda video is shown where Napoleon is dressed up as a human and a bunch of ducks singing a new anthem called Napoleon: Mighty Leader. In addition, The character of Snowball almost instantly disappears in the movie as in the book he plays a more important role and is mentioned multiple times including the part when he is banished from the farm.

Finally, contrasting the background details which play a big role since movies generally limit the imagination of the spectator: for example, In the book the time period when the story takes place is undefined, while in the movie the story is obviously told during the 1950s because of the clothing and cars that can be occasionally seen especially when Jones is still in command of the farm. Also, the book describes the farm as an ordinary small farm, while in the movie, the farm is seen as a giant collective workshop, similar to the soviet 'Kolkhoz'. Finally, the movie doesn't respect the flow of time of the book because the movie makes it appear as if only a few months have passed, but in the original novel it has actually been 20 months.

To Conclude, the book will always remain the most interesting version of the novel since it can be interpreted in several ways and you can use imagination to visualize the characters in anyway possible. In addition the novel was never meant to be a fable because of the complicated story behind the "comic" animal theme given to it by the author. I think that there isn't a better between book and movie, it depends based on who's reading/watching the story: If I were a little kid I'd prefer to watch the movie since it's easier to comprehend, and if I were a grown up maybe I'd understand the deep significance under the whole story and how it relates to the secret plots of Stalin's rule.