George Orwell’s Animal Farm

What is George Orwell’s message in Animal Farm, and how does he use

two of the animal characters in the novel to present his political

views?

In this book George Orwell has tried to put a political view into the

story. This political view is that Communist ideas can not work

without using excessive power, also that political systems can easily

be corrupted by power-hungry people. George Orwell uses animals in

this clever allegory to represent humans. Two main characters of

‘Animal Farm’ are Napoleon and Boxer. Napoleon acts like a dictator

and leads the farm and animals. He has power over the animals so they

have no freedom, so much so, that they can’t rebel against him if they

wanted to. Boxer an idealistic follower for Napoleon; he will

sacrifice anything for the farm and the other animals. Boxer believes

everything that he is told by Napoleon and cannot see that Napoleon is

a corrupt leader.

As soon as Old Major had died Napoleon took his place as the leader of

the Animals, and so he controlled them after the rebellion against

humans. At first he was a fair leader and treated the animals kindly,

or so they thought.

“The pigs did not actually work, but directed and supervised the others.”

This shows that the pigs were lazy and demanding from the beginning

when they started to run the farm, and it wasn’t that they grew

power-hungry, they already were.

The animals started to realise that the pigs were not doing any work.

The majority thought there must be an excellent reason for them not

doing any work.

“We pigs are the brain-workers. The whole management and organization of

the farm depends on us”

After hearing this, the animals understood that they were there to do

the hard work, but they thought that was because they couldn’t run the

farm as well as the pigs. They did not mind lying to the animals and

not doing any work while the other animals are.

Napoleon knew that there was a chance that the animals might rebel

against him so when 9 puppies were born on the farm he took them to

train as his bodyguards.

“As soon as they were weaned, Napoleon took them away from their mothers…”

After the animals knew what he was doing, even if they did disagree

with what he was doing could not do anything about it even if the

wanted to either because they were not strong enough or that they were

to scared. So this meant that Napoleon could do whatever he wanted to,

just like a dictator.

The only animal threatening Napoleon’s place in power was Snowball, so