One of the commonest techniques used in both Stalinist Russia and in Animal Farm is what’s known as ‘gaslighting’ (meaning to manipulate someone by psychological means so they begin to doubt their own sanity the term is derived from the film adaptation of Gaslight, a play by Patrick Hamilton).įor instance, when Napoleon and the other pigs take to eating their meals and sleeping in the beds in the house at Animal Farm, Clover is convinced this goes against one of the seven commandments the animals drew up at the beginning of their revolution.īut one of the pigs has altered the commandment (‘No animal shall sleep in a bed’), adding the words ‘ with sheets’ to the end of it. The cleverness of Orwell’s approach is that he manages to infuse his story with this political meaning while also telling an engaging tale about greed, corruption, and ‘society’ in a more general sense. It’s also political allegory, and even satire. We offer a fuller definition of allegory in a separate post, but the key thing is that, although it was subtitled A Fairy Story, Orwell’s novella is far from being a straightforward tale for children. The parallels with Orwell’s Animal Farm are crystal-clear.Īnimal Farm is an allegory for the Russian Revolution and the formation of a Communist regime in Russia (as the Soviet Union). But they told the people that things were much better since the Russian Revolution and the overthrow of the Tsar, than things had been before, under Nicholas II. They were starving to death.īut Stalin and his politicians, who themselves were well-off, did nothing to combat this problem, and indeed actively contributed to it. However, it soon became apparent that Stalin’s Communist regime wasn’t working: huge swathes of the population were working hard, but didn’t have enough food to survive. Josef Stalin became leader of Communist Russia, or the Soviet Union, in the early 1920s. Everyone works, but everyone benefits equally from the results of that work. These revolutionaries replaced the aristocratic rule which had been a feature of Russian society for centuries with a new political system: Communism, whereby everyone was equal. In 1917, the Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, was overthrown by Communist revolutionaries. Things have gone full circle: the pigs are no different from Mr Jones (indeed, are worse).įirst, a very brief history lesson, by way of context for Animal Farm. The other animals from the farm, observing this through the window, can no longer tell which are the pigs and which are the men, because Napoleon and the other pigs are behaving so much like men now. Napoleon announces to his human guests that the name of the farm is reverting from Animal Farm to the original name, Manor Farm. Finally, the pigs invite humans into the farm to drink with them, and announce a new partnership between the pigs and humans.
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