ANIMAL FARM

Animal Farm tells the story of Manor Farm, run by Mr. Jones, who enslaves his animals. Guided by old Majors (a pig) dream of animal emancipation, the animals rebel against their owner, although the pig dies before the Revolution. However, he leaves two pigs in command: Napoleon and Snowball. Under the hymn Beasts of England, all the animals prosper, free from the humans bad management. They adopt the principles of Animalism, they change the farms name to Animal Farm and they write down (the pigs knew how to read and write which made them the ones in charge) the Seven Commandments, where they said that they were enemies of anyone who had two legs and comrades of anyone who had four. Anything resembling human behavior was forbidden like drinking or sleeping in beds. The last rule was: All animals are equal.

Mr. Jones wanted to take back his farm, so with the help of a group of armed men, they invaded Animal Farm. The animals managed to keep the farm because Snowball knew war tactics. This battle was called Battle of the Cowshed Snowball won a medal for his commanding skills. However, he and Napoleon had different points of view on everything, and when Snowball suggested that they should build a windmill, Napoleon used dogs he had raised himself to scare off Snowball, who was never to be seen again, and so Napoleon became the ruler of the farm. Snowball was made a political goat, used as a way to maintain the farm united. As for the other animals, they didnt know how to read or write, so they were kept in ignorance. The peace was maintained with Squealers lies (the symbol of propaganda). The pigs started to run business with the humans, because they couldnt produce all the stuff they needed in the farm. One of the humans, owner of a near farm, attacked the animals, destroying the windmill. Boxer, one of the horses, thought that all problems could be solved if he did an extra effort, and he ended up wounded trying to reconstruct the windmill. Although Squealer told the animals he was going to the hospital, he was in fact taken to the slaughterhouse. Napoleon and the pigs manipulated the commandments so as to start drinking and wearing clothes. The rest of the farm was afraid of the humans and so they accepted what seemed to them a transgression on Animalism, which had failed: the pigs changed the All animals are equal rule for All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. The book ends with a party thrown by Napoleon with the owners of the other farms. Napoleon and the rest are playing cards, and when some of the animals looked through the window they couldnt say who the pigs and the humans were.

Ive read Animal Farm for the first time when I was in 9th grade. Since then, Ive wondered much about societies and their forms of government. George Orwell was born in 1903 in India. During the Second World War he served in the Home Guard and worked for the BBC Eastern Service from 1941 to 1943. His

unique political allegory, Animal Farm, was published in 1945. George Orwell died in London in January 1950. The author of this book lived in the first half of the 20th century, one of historys most bloody periods. He had seen the destruction of the World Wars, but most of all, he saw the clash between ideals: the Western Capitalism and the Russian Communism. Communism dominated Russia for most of the last century and the rest of the world wondered, like the humans in the story, if the Russians (or the animals) would succeed. And at the beginning they both did. Animalism was firstly an attempt to bring equality to every animal in the farm. However, due to the pigs greed, especially Napoleons, all those attempts ended up worse than the starting point: they only changed dictators. And something similar happened in Russia. After the revolution of Marx and Lenin, here as old Major, the farms hopes were destroyed by Napoleon as Russians were by Stalin. Is this story a criticism of Communism? In my opinion, its a criticism of greed and the destruction of values that followed. It describes how education is essential to the well-being of a society: an uneducated population is gold to a dictatorial ruler. Take Boxer as an example he would always work harder and he ended up dead. With his strength and will, he could have removed Napoleon from his throne, if only he knew how to read and write. Communism is wrong, because it assumes that people will always do the right thing the pigs didnt, and so Animalism was destroyed. My favorite character was Snowball. He stands for good in politics, for those who care not about themselves but the entire society. I think that he is a role-model, and I can only hope of a time where real politics are like that.