Animal Farm: A Fairy Story is a novel by George Orwell published on 17 August 1945 by Secker & Warburg. The novel continues Orwell's project of opposing totalitarianism with a fable about farm animals that parallels the Russian Revolution.
Writing and publication[]
The title was shortened to just Animal Farm upon publication in the United States.
Plot[]
The animals at the farm of Mr. Jones rises up and ousted humans from the farm. They then worked the farm for themselves, lead by the pigs. The pigs eventually became corrupt with power. The pigs, some led by Napoleon, eliminate all threat to Napoleon's power on the farm and the pig Snowball from the farm. After Napoleon consolidated power into his own (metaphorical) hands, the pigs start to become more and more like humans, their sworn enemies, until it is impossible to distinguish between the two.
Reception[]
Animal Farm is easily Orwell's best-selling work—it and Nineteen Eighty-Four are the best-selling duo of books by a 20th-century author.
Adaptations[]
- Animal Farm (1954)
- Animal Farm (1999)
Characters[]
The characters in Animal Farm serve as analogs to historical figures or generic types of persons in the October Revolution.
- Napoleon - Joseph Stalin
- Snowball - Leon Trotsky
- Boxer - Working Class.
- Squealer - Vyacheslav Molotov
- Old Major - Karl Marx / Vladimir Lenin
- Clover - Working Class.
- Moses -???
- Mollie - Middle Class.
- Benjamin -Communist doubters.
- Muriel - ???
- Mr. Jones - Tsar Nicholas II
- Mr. Frederick - Adolf Hitler
- Mr. Pilkington - Western Allies / Ruling Class
- Mr. Whymper - Capitalists
- Jessie - ???
- Bluebell - ???
- Minimus - ???
Settings[]
- Manor Farm, time 1917-1955
Ideas[]
- Four legs good, two legs bad
- Four legs good, two legs better
- Beasts of England
External links[]
- Full text of Animal Farm on Bibliowiki. The novel is in the public domain in Canada but is still under copyright in the United Kingdom and the United States.
- Quotations from and about Animal Farm on Wikiquote.