The Theme Of Dystopia In George Orwell's Animal Farm

The novel Animal Farm by George Orwell takes place in a controlled dystopian society. A dystopian society is one that includes “an imaginary place where people are unhappy and usually afraid because they are not treated fairly” (“Dystopia”). The animals rebel against their farmer, Mr. Jones, in an attempt to live life freely without the rule of a human. However, a pig named Napoleon takes over, and as the novel progresses we can see that he “is worse than the humans, and thus that the animals would be better off under benign human control” (Fitzgerald 3). The farm becomes a dystopia because there is mass poverty, the animals have no freedoms, and violence occurs. Although the farm animals believe they are living in a utopian society, Animal Farm is revealed to be a dystopian novel because Napoleon ultimately leads the farm into a totalitarian regime.

The pigs on the Animal Farm take most of the food produced for themselves. They always ensure they have enough to live comfortably with, although “the other animals work their paws and hoofs to the bone as they till the fields and rebuild the windmill, all the while barely getting enough to eat” (Cummings 3). There is not a lot of food for the animals after the pigs, who do not
In their new life on the farm, the animals work long days throughout the week, and although “this work was strictly voluntary... any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half” (Orwell 73). The rations that the animals receive are already small, as the pigs take most of the food. The pigs think this is fair, still, because “apparently, power means that you get to redefine language so that ‘strictly voluntary’ means ‘in order to eat’” (“Animal Farm Power” 1). The animals essentially have no choice in whether they want to work or not. If the animals make their own decisions, they are punished for doing