Savannah Kouyate

Mrs. Vickrey
Honors British Literature/4th Block
6 November 2015
Animal Farm
During the 1920s, there was a monumental fear of the totalitarian communistic system. In
George Orwells dystopian allegory, Animal Farm, he portrays the painful yet solid truths of this
fear. On the surface, Animal Farm seems to be a melodramatic novel about what would happen
in a world where animals could rule themselves. However, every detail and character in the book
has a deeper meaning. Napoleon, the leader of all the animals was the character Orwell used to
develop many of his themes. But he is not the only one. Orwell uses all the animals as allegories
to develop the themes of his novel and of that decade.
Old Major, the Karl Marx of the animals, had a dream one night of a revolution. Though
all the animals prepared, it came much sooner t5han anyone expected. After the revolution, in
order to govern, the most intelligent animals formulated a system called, animalism, and laws
called, The Seven Commandments. As Napoleon gained more power, he began to manipulate
the rules so they mostly benefit himself and other pigs. So slowly, The Seven Commandments
``unalterable law''are revised one by one to suit Napoleon's purposes (Robb n.pag).
Originally the sixth commandment read, "No animal shall kill any other animal, but when it was
read later in the book, It ran: "No animal shall kill any other animal WITHOUT
CAUSE"(Orwell 6). Napoleon finds it easy to manipulate anything and he will if he feels it

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would help him: He rewrites the history of the animals so that Snowball is made a traitor and he
also revises the Commandments to support greater privileges for the pigs.
Animal Farm depicts how during the Red Scare things became the way they did. It shows
every aspect and how it made an impact on everything that occurred. Each character now matter
how irrelevant they seemed to be, even if they were nameless, they had a part. Just like how
every person involved in the communist takeover had a part. Orwell knew exactly how to
reinvent the occurences of that time. The leadership, the cleverness and the manipulation.

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Work Cited
Robb, Paul H. "Animal Farm: Overview." Reference Guide to English Literature. Ed. D. L.
Kirkpatrick. 2nd ed. Chicago: St. James Press, 1991. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6
Nov. 2015.
Orwell, George. Animal Farm. Web ed. Australia: eBook@Adelaide,
1944. Print.
"Overview: Animal Farm." Characters in 20th-Century Literature. Laurie Lanzen Harris. Detroit:
Gale, 1990. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.
"Overview: Animal Farm." Literature and Its Times: Profiles of 300 Notable Literary Works and
the Historical Events that Influenced Them. Joyce Moss and George Wilson. Vol. 4:
World War II to the Affluent Fifties (1940-1950s). Detroit: Gale, 1997. Literature
Resource Center. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.