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Political Allegory In Animal Farm, By George Orwell

Decent Essays

‘Animal Farm’ is a novella by George Orwell, which serves as a political allegory of the Soviet Union and satirises the tyranny under Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship. It tells the story of a farm on which the animals drive out their human master, Mr Jones, who has grown accustomed to neglecting them in his drunken stupors, reflecting how Tsar Nicholas II ignored the squalor the proletariat were living in whilst the bourgeoisie enjoyed better fortunes. With Jones ousted, the animals seem to enjoy a life of equality but as issues arise, the pigs, who claim themselves to be the most intelligent of the animals, put themselves in charge and a power struggle arises between the two most headstrong pigs, Napoleon, a “fierce-looking Berkshire boar”, and Snowball, ‘a more vivacious pig’. Orwell presents a social hierarchy and a divide between the pigs and the other animals from an early point with it growing more prominent as the story progresses using a variety of language and structural techniques. From the first chapter, where the fundamental ideologies of Animalism were created, the pigs were portrayed by Orwell to be better than everyone else and an underlying social hierarchy was evident throughout. As all the residents of the farm took their places to hear Old Major’s speech, it was evident that the pigs (who represent the Bolshevik leaders) and the dogs were of highest regard as they sat at the front. There appeared to be some correlation between the seating arrangements and the

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