Animal Farm is an allegory which is a story with deeper levels of meaning. Although it seems to be a
simple story about animals on a farm revolting against their owner, every aspect of the story represents
something from Russian history. Watch the following video links for help on the background of the
characters. You may have to do some more research on your own. Read the information on the
symbolism of events and use it to help you complete the theme charts and essay. This only provides you
with the historical information and not the events in the story.
I.
Characters
a. Old Major = Karl Marx, father of Communism (video - http://www.biography.com/people/karlmarx-9401219)
b. Snowball = Leon Trotsky (video - http://www.biography.com/people/leon-trotsky-9510793)
c. Napoleon = Josef Stalin, with a big fat allusion to, uh, Napoleon. (Bonaparte.) Video
(http://www.history.com/topics/russian-revolution/videos/josephstalin?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false)
d. Squealer = Propaganda in general;
e. Moses = the Russian Orthodox Church
f. Boxer = Russian laborers and workers
g. Clover = Russian laborers and workers, of the female kind
h. Mollie = the bourgeoisie, the wealthy aristocracy
i. Mr. and Mrs. Jones = Tsar Nicholas II and his family; also capitalists in general
j. Mr. Pilkington = the U.S., U.K., France
k. Mr. Frederick = Hitler
l. Puppies = KGB, brutal police force
II.
Symbolism of Events
A. Old Major’s Dream: Major's dream is a stand-in for Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. In 1848,
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels published the Communist Manifesto, which laid out the basic principles of what we
now call communism. The basic idea of the Manifesto was capitalism was seriously flawed. The workers never saw the
products of their labor because the capitalists—the people who owned the means of production (factories, land, etc.)—
claimed the profit for themselves. In other words, workers grew the grain; the landowners took it. Workers made the
chairs; factory owners sold them and kept the profit.
So what? Isn't that how the world just works? Well, yeah. Because we live in a capitalist system. But Marx's point is
that the landowners and factory owners don't produce anything. They might hold the deeds or buy machines out of their
company's earnings, but they're not actually doing labor. For most people, that's not a problem—that's just the way the
world works.
For Marx, it was a big problem and it led to massive exploitation of the workers. He said that if common workers could
overthrow the capitalists and claim the means of production for themselves, then all the workers of the world could live
in peace with one another. At the end of the Manifesto, Marx declares, "The proletarians [common workers] have
nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, Unite!"
B. The fall of Mister Jones represents the overthrow of Russia's Tsar Nicholas II.
Russian tsars weren't exactly known for being in touch with the common man, but ol' Nick was particularly bad—lavishing
money on himself and his family while ignoring the fact that his people were not doing so well. In 1914, he got Russia
entangled in World War I, and then bungled the thing. The war effort and problems with food supply led to famine—just like
Mr. Jones forgetting to feed his poor animals).
Like the animals' rebellion, the February Revolution of 1917 was kind of random. It began with nothing more than a few strikes
and demonstrations in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg. The situation exploded when Nicholas sent in the military.
Problem? The military actually sympathized with the people, and many of the military leaders didn't care for the way Nicholas
was handling the war. The army refused to squash the protests and then turned on Nicholas. Eventually, they forced him to
abdicate, exiled him and his family, and set up a temporary government. End phase one of the Russian Revolution.
In the 1890s, the government had exiled Vladimir Lenin to Siberia for getting a little too radical with his Marxism; Siberia
didn't agree with him, so he left for Western Europe. But then the February Revolution happened, and Lenin came home. His
first order of business: publishing the April Theses, a.k.a. Animal Farm's Seven Commandments. The April Theses were Lenin's
idea for what comes next—how to turn the Revolution into a new society.
C.
Battle of Cowshed is a stand-in for the Russian Civil War.
The Civil War wasn't fought between the people and the tsar—because the tsar was already dead. It was fought between the
Bolshevik Red Army and a motley crew of landowners, middle-class citizens, monarchists, and old army generals. These
people had two things in common: they hated the Bolsheviks, and they called themselves the White Army.
Key fact: in 1917, the world was smack in the middle of a little conflict called World War I (or the Great War, in 1917). By
1918, German attacks were a little too close to home, so the Bolsheviks signed a treaty to end the war. Trotsky (a.k.a. Snowball)
didn't want to—but the Bolsheviks didn't have a choice. Their country was in uproar, and the White Army seized on the treaty
as a sign of weakness.
The White Army wasn't alone. It had help from foreign countries like the U.S. and U.K., who were super concerned about
something they called the Domino Effect: the idea that communism would spread from Russia, knocking over capitalism
countries like so many dominoes. These Western countries sent in reinforcements. They failed.
D. The windmill represents the decision about whether or not to expand communism.
In the early 1920s, Lenin started to get sick—deathly sick. And that meant one communist party was about to need a leader.
Cue Josef Stalin and Leon Trotsky both waving their hands around in the air and shouting "Pick me! Pick me!"
One major difference between the two (aside from the fact that one was a possibly psychopathic dictator) is that Trotsky wanted
to spread the Revolution in other countries, while Stalin wanted to hunker down and consolidate power. But only Stalin had the
power to make his vision happen: he was General Secretary of the Communist Party, so he was able to convince people to
support his campaign against Trotsky. After Lenin died, Trotsky was exiled. By 1928, Russia was Stalin's.
E.
Napoleon's initiative represents Stalin's Five-Year Plans.
When Stalin took over the Soviet Union, he proposed the first of his Five-Year Plans. The goal? To rapidly industrialize the
nation so that it could catch up with the West.
He also decided to collectivize agriculture, which is a fancy way of saying that he thought he could gets the peasants to produce
more crops by moving them off their individual farms and onto large-scale mechanical farms. Nice in theory; too bad it was a
total failure. Instead of improving quality of life, the plan seems to have directly contributed to widespread famine in 1931 and
1932. Whether or not Stalin's plan was totally responsible, he sure didn't do much to help them.
F. Napoleon's response to the Hen Rebellion represents Stalin's Great Purge. (Video
http://www.history.com/topics/russian-revolution/videos/stalinspurges?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false
What we have here is a nightmarish allusion to the Great Purge, which took place between 1936 and 1938. To eliminate his
opposition, Stalin executed or exiled anyone he didn't like: Trotsky's supporters, as well as landowners, military leaders, and
Jimmy Buffet fans. Okay, we made that last one up.
The point is, Stalin went a little nuts "purging" the Soviet Union of its perceived enemies. The estimates of how many died in
the purges ranges from about 500,000 up to 2 million. And they had a particularly nasty element: Stalin forced people to confess
falsely and publicly to crimes that they never committed, often after psychological torment and outright torture. These became
known as the "Moscow Show Trials."
G. Frederick's scheming represents Hitler's breaking of the non-aggression pact he signed with Stalin.
Here's the real story: Stalin (Napoleon) and Hitler (Mr. Frederick) were mortal enemies. The Nazi Party was super opposed to
communism, what with them being fascists (even though "socialist" was actually in the full name of the Nazi party—go figure).
Stalin, meanwhile, was in theory super opposed to fascism—so much so that he almost signed an anti-German political alliance
with France and Britain (represented by Mr. Pilkington) in the late 1930s. When that fell through, Stalin basically stuck out his
tongue at Britain by signing a non-aggression pact with Hitler instead (August 1939). The pact divided up Eastern Europe into
German and Soviet realms of influence. Mortal enemies become BFFs.
Except, again, not. In early 1941, Stalin's spies told him that Hitler was planning to break the pact, but he couldn't believe the
Germans would invade Russia before defeating Britain. But they did. In June 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa.
Millions of German troops poured into Soviet territory.
H. The Battle of the Windmill represents World War II.
Russia may have been on the winning side of World War II, but they lost huge numbers of citizens—up to 11 million soldiers in
the war, and maybe even more civilian casualties. The low point came in December 1942, when the German army pushed
within twenty miles of Moscow. The Soviets managed to push the Germans back and protect Hitler's next goal—their southern
oil fields—but only with a lot of death and destruction.
I.
Boxer's death is an allegory-within-an-allegory for Stalin's betrayal of the proletariat (working class)
Boxer's betrayal doesn't match up with any specific episode in Russian history. Instead, it's a little allegory for Stalinism as
a whole—betraying the very workers it was supposed to help.
J.
The meeting between the pigs and humans at the end of Animal Farm alludes to the Tehran
Conference of 1943 and the beginning of the Cold War.
"Normal business relations" is code for capitalism—at least, capitalism in relation to the rest of the world. Behind this
farmhouse meeting is the Tehran Conference, a November 1943 meeting between the World War II Allied leaders Franklin
Roosevelt (U.S.), Winston Churchill (U.K.), and… Dear Leader Stalin himself (U.S.S.R.).
At this point in the war, Stalin's army was looking pretty successful, and the other leaders wanted his help. In exchange, he got
them to promise to support his government and also to give him most of eastern Poland. Churchill and Roosevelt decided that
Stalin's demands were a small price to pay for winning the war. But plenty of other people in the West—like Orwell—saw it as
a sellout at best and a compromise with an evil dictator at worst.
The moment that ace of spades hits the table is the allegorical beginning of the Cold War, a decade-long mostly non-military
conflict between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. that was so tense that kids in both countries had nuclear bomb drills at school. (Ask
your grandparents.)
In 1941, the leaders the Allied countries were willing to compromise with Stalin. Maybe they even believed he wasn't so bad.
But not Orwell. Orwell could see the cards on the table.