Animal Farm SparkNotes Literature Guide: Volume 16 (SparkNotes Literature Guide Series)

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Squealer figures crucially in the novel, as his proficiency in spreading lie-filled propaganda allows the pigs to conceal their acts of greed beneath a veneer of common good. His statements and behaviors exemplify the linguistic and psychological methods that the pigs use to control the other animals while convincing them that this strict regime is essential if the animals want to avoid becoming subject to human cruelty again. The cleverness of Orwell’s approach is that he manages to infuse his story with this political meaning while also telling an engaging tale about greed, corruption, and ‘society’ in a more general sense.

And we can draw a pretty clear line between many of the major characters in Animal Farm and key figures of the Russian Revolution and Stalinist Russia. Napoleon, the leader of the animals, is Joseph Stalin; Old Major, whose speech rouses the animals to revolution, partly represents Vladimir Lenin, who spearheaded the Russian Revolution of 1917 (although he is also a representative of Karl Marx, whose ideas inspired the Revolution); Snowball, who falls out with Napoleon and is banished from the farm, represents Leon Trotsky, who was involved in the Revolution but later went to live in exile in Mexico.Dwan, David (2012). "Orwell's Paradox: Equality in Animal Farm". ELH. 79 (3): 655–83. doi: 10.1353/elh.2012.0025. ISSN 1080-6547. S2CID 143828269. Napoleon takes no interest in Snowball’s committees. When the dogs Jessie and Bluebell each give birth to puppies, he takes the puppies into his own care, saying that the training of the young should take priority over adult education. He raises the puppies in a loft above the harness room, out of sight of the rest of Animal Farm. Soule, George (1946). "1946 Review of George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' ". The New Republic. Archived from the original on 14 January 2017. Eliot, Valery (6 January 1969). "T.S. Eliot and Animal Farm: Reasons for Rejection". The Times. UK. Archived from the original on 15 October 2009 . Retrieved 8 April 2009.

Squealer is Napoleon’s propagandist, ensuring that the decisions Napoleon makes are ‘spun’ so that the other animals will accept them and carry on working hard. Orwell wrote the book between November 1943 and February 1944, when the United Kingdom was in its wartime alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, and the British intelligentsia held Stalin in high esteem, a phenomenon Orwell hated. [b] The manuscript was initially rejected by several British and American publishers, [9] including one of Orwell's own, Victor Gollancz, which delayed its publication. It became a great commercial success when it did appear as international relations and public opinion were transformed as the wartime alliance gave way to the Cold War. [10] Mr. Jones, along with men from neighboring farms, marches on Animal Farm. Snowball uses his knowledge of the Roman general Julius Caesar to lead the animals to victory against the humans. The animals retrieve Mr. Jones’s gun, agreeing to fire on the anniversary of their victory and on the anniversary of the Rebellion. The original title was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, but US publishers dropped the subtitle when it was published in 1946, and only one of the translations during Orwell's lifetime, the Telugu version, kept it. Other title variations include subtitles like "A Satire" and "A Contemporary Satire". [7] Orwell suggested the title Union des républiques socialistes animales for the French translation, which abbreviates to URSA, the Latin word for "bear", a symbol of Russia. It also played on the French name of the Soviet Union, Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques. [7] Point of viewThe story is told from the point of view of the common animals of Animal Farm, though it refers to them in the third person plural as “they.”The white goat who reads the Seven Commandments to Clover whenever Clover suspects the pigs of violating their prohibitions. Mr. Jones Similarly, the music in the novel, starting with "Beasts of England" and the later anthems, parallels " The Internationale" and its adoption and repudiation by the Soviet authorities as the anthem of the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. [81]

Carr, Craig L. (2010). Orwell, Politics, and Power. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-4411-5854-3 . Retrieved 9 June 2012. The pigs also convince the other animals that they deserve to eat the apples themselves because they work so hard to keep things running, and that they will have an extra hour in bed in the mornings. In other words, they begin to become the very thing they sought to overthrow: they become like man. Orwell, George (1945). "The Freedom of the Press: Orwell's Proposed Preface to 'Animal Farm' ". Archived from the original on 16 January 2013 . Retrieved 22 February 2019.a b c d e f g h "Banned & Challenged Classics". Advocacy, Legislation & Issues. 26 March 2013 . Retrieved 26 November 2019. The long-lived donkey who refuses to feel inspired by the Rebellion. Benjamin firmly believes that life will remain unpleasant no matter who is in charge. Of all of the animals on the farm, he alone comprehends the changes that take place, but he seems either unwilling or unable to oppose the pigs. As well as being an allegory of the ways human exploit and oppress one another, Animal Farmalso makes a more literal argument: humans exploit and oppress animals. While the animals’ rebellion is mostly comic in tone, it ends on a serious and touching note, when the animals “wipe out the last traces of Jones’s hated reign. The harness-room at the end of the stables was broken open; the bits, the nose-rings, the dog-chains, the cruel knives with which Mr. Jones had been used to castrate the pigs and lambs, were all flung down the well” ( Chapter 2). As the animals listen raptly, Old Major delivers up the fruits of his years of quiet contemplation in his stall. The plain truth, he says, is that the lives of his fellow animals are “miserable, laborious, and short.” Animals are born into the world as slaves, worked incessantly from the time they can walk, fed only enough to keep breath in their bodies, and then slaughtered mercilessly when they are no longer useful. He notes that the land upon which the animals live possesses enough resources to support many times the present population in luxury; there is no natural reason for the animals’ poverty and misery. Major blames the animals’ suffering solely on their human oppressors. Mr. Jones and his ilk have been exploiting animals for ages, Major says, taking all of the products of their labor—eggs, milk, dung, foals—for themselves and producing nothing of value to offer the animals in return. But Stalin and his politicians, who themselves were well-off, did nothing to combat this problem, and indeed actively contributed to it. But they told the people that things were much better since the Russian Revolution and the overthrow of the Tsar, than things had been before, under Nicholas II. The parallels with Orwell’s Animal Farm are crystal-clear.