01. Animal Farm is the Most Universal Political Novel
When I taught ANIMAL FARM, I had one rule: no mention of Soviet Russia until the end of our study. I governed this command with a dictatorial hand; any time one of my high-achievers, who had inevitably read the book’s Wikipedia page outside of class, raised their hands and tried to say something about Joseph Stalin or Leon Trotsky, I interrupted them and moved on to a less studious pupil, because I knew their analysis wouldn’t go beyond the surface level – pigs who lead a rebellion – and the class would be better off for it.
ANIMAL FARM, the allegory, is kind of boring. If you read the book with “Soviet Russia” in your mind (or open on your web browser), the narrative is reduced to a kind of matching game. Old Major is Karl Marx, Napoleon (the pig) is Stalin, Snowball is Trotsky, and Moses (the bird) is the Orthodox Church. The Windmill Project is Stalin’s Five-Years Plan and the Battle of the Windmill is World War II. Boxer the horse is probably the working class and Molly the bourgeoisie, though maybe we’re going too far down the rabbit hole at that point. But anyways, isn’t Orwell clever?
And that’s about the start and end of it, how clever that author was to make all those real people into animals.
Allegories have a hard time going past this. In fact, I’d suggest that allegories are universally dull, if there’s even enough of them to recognize a trend. Arguably, the only true allegory is THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, and it’s one of the dullest books ever written. Our hero, “Christian,” is on a journey to the “Celestial City.” On the way he meets characters with names such as “Obstinate,” “Hypocrisy,” and (I promise I’m not making this up) “Lord Hate-Good.” Gee, I wonder what those guys will be like? Even C.S. Lewis tried to escape the pitfalls of allegory, claiming that THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA is in fact not allegorical, but “supposal.” Suppose there was an alternate world, a multiverse if you will, populated by talking animals? If we also suppose the Christian god is real (as Lewis, obviously, does), then we must also suppose that this world would experience sin and need Jesus’ redemption too, but what would he be like there? A lion, obviously. NARNIA isn’t allegory, it’s science fiction!1
ANIMAL FARM isn’t just an allegory, though, it’s also a fable, and fables have different rules. Fables are stories (usually short and historically old) which typically use anthropomorphized animals to teach a moral or lesson. Unlike allegories, though, fables are less didactic, more open to interpretation.
Here’s a translation of “The Tortoise and the Hare,” the most famous of Aesop’s fables, by George Fyler Townsend in 1867.
A hare one day ridiculed the short feet and slow pace of the tortoise. The latter, laughing, said, "Though you be swift as the wind, I will beat you in a race." The hare, deeming her assertion to be simply impossible, assented to the proposal; and they agreed that the fox should choose the course, and fix the goal. On the day appointed for the race they started together. The tortoise never for a moment stopped, but went on with a slow but steady pace straight to the end of the course. The hare, trusting to his native swiftness, cared little about the race, and lying down by the wayside, fell fast asleep. At last waking up, and moving as fast as he could, he saw the tortoise had reached the goal, and was comfortably dozing after her fatigue.2
This is the version that gave us the phrase “slow and steady wins the race.” Of course, Aesop wrote in Greek, and his stories have been interpreted differently over the years. Here’s an older version, by Sir Roger L'Estrange in 1738:
What a dull heavy Creature (says a Hare) is this same Tortoise! And yet (says the Tortoise) I'll run with you for a Wager. 'Twas done and done, and the Fox, by Consent, was to be the Judge. They started together, and the Tortoise kept jogging on still till he came to the End of the Course. The Hare laid himself down about Midway, and took a Nap; for, says he, I can fetch up the tortoise when I please: But he over-slept himself, it seems, for when he came to wake, though he scudded away as fast as 'twas possible, the Tortoise got to the Post before him, and won the Wager.
The Moral
Up and be doing, is an edifying Text; for Action is the Business of Life, and there's no Thought of ever coming to the end of our Journey in time, if we sleep by the way.
The moral here is quite different. In this version, the tortoise’s virtue was not that he was “slow and steady,” but rather “up and doing.” He was active, whereas the hare was lazy and sluggish. The story turns on its irony, that the animals act in a manner contrary to what you expect. This version, frankly, makes more sense. “Fast and steady” would beat “slow and steady” any day of the week, while “takes a nap in the middle of the race” will lose to just about anyone.
Beginning and focusing our analysis on the plain text, the words on the page and the animals in the tale, rather than working backwards from a thematic or allegorical meaning, is (ironically) the only way to reach any worthwhile insight. The same is true with ANIMAL FARM, which is why I held such a firm to ensure the discussion stays focused on the characters and their story.
Here is that story:
One day, all the animals of Manor Farm gather to listen to Old Major, the greatly respected prized boar. He is nearing the end of his life, and he has something to share. It’s a dream, a vision, of a farm ruled by animals. You see, the farmer, Mr. Jones, is a bad man. He’s a drunk and mistreats the animals. Moreover, even if that weren’t the case (though it is), the basic setup of the farm gives the animals a raw deal. They spend all day in backbreaking physical labor, yet the farmer gets all the reward. He takes the cow’s milk and the chicken’s eggs, and the moment an animal is no longer able to work, the farmer kills them. Mr. Jones is particularly bad, but he isn’t exactly unique; all humans ultimately treat their animals this way. So, Old Major says, there must be a revolution. He declares that all animals are equal, and all humans are the enemy. Then, Old Major dies.
This proves a popular message, and soon the animals put it into practice. They revolt, kick out Mr. Jones, and take over operations. They give the land a new name to reflect its unique communal ownership. It is now the Animal Farm, and it is governed by the Seven Laws of Animalism, chief among them: “All Animals Are Equal.”
The animals immediately run into problems. As it turns out, farms are complicated operations, and someone needs to be in charge, or the field will not be plowed and the cows udders will burst. The pigs, chief among them Napoleon and Snowball, take this task upon themselves, and they begin assigning the other animals tasks. They’re good at the job, and the farm starts working, much better in fact than in Jones’ day. The pigs take extra milk and all the apples for themselves, and no one bats an eye, because this feeds their brains, which of course are essential for sustaining farm operations.
But Napoleon and Snowball’s partnership is uneasy. Snowball is clearly the smarter of the two. He creates a plan to build a windmill, which will generate electricity and reduce their need for hard manual labor. Everyone likes this plan, and they begin looking to Snowball as their leader. Napoleon is a brute and a bully. He calls Snowball weak and urinates over the windmill blueprints. This act of strength wins over some of the animals, but not enough. Eventually, Napoleon sics his dogs on Snowball, chases him off the farm, and declares himself the ruler of Animal Farm.
From there, Napoleon takes more and more, systematically breaking all seven laws for his own personal gain. He engages in trade with the humans and uses the profits to purchase alcohol. He seizes the field meant as a pasture for retired animals, sows it with barley, and brews his own alcohol. He gives himself dubious military honors. He murders fellow animals for nonexistent crimes. He moves into the farmhouse and sleeps in the bed. He wears clothes. No one puts up a fight, and of course Napoleon has clear explanations for everything. The law, he claims, never said animals shall not sleep in beds. It just said they shall not sleep in beds with sheets, and Napoleon took the sheets out! And anyways, a barn stall is basically a bed, so that law didn’t make sense to begin with.
It goes on this way, until finally Napoleon sells the horse Boxer, a hardworking animal beloved by all, to be slaughtered and turned into glue. A few animals finally object, but it’s too late. Napoleon uses the proceeds to purchase another batch of whiskey, and then reveals that he’s decided to wear clothes and stand on two legs. The animals can no longer tell the difference between Napoleon and Mr. Jones (though, very few animals even remember Jones by now), and Napoleon repeals all seven laws, replacing them with one: All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. The end.
***
ANIMAL FARM, the fable, is delightful. There’s a cat who, in perfect cat nature, slyly raises its hand on both sides of a vote, hedging its bets to align with whoever wins. There’s a revolution song, introduced by Old Major, titled “Beasts of England,” which is described, somehow, as a cross between “Oh my Darling Clementine” and “La Cucaracha.” It’s a joke that only works in novel form; a movie would have to figure out what that actually sounds like, a feat that would be more annoying than funny, in the event you actually managed. This is probably why most film adaptations change the song. One year, my students really latched onto this song and staged a rebellion against my own authority in the classroom. At the start of each class session, as I was going over announcements and generally trying to keep order, one student would begin a rousing chorus of “Beasts of England.”3 Others would join in, until the whole class was singing, and they wouldn’t stop until they had sung every verse. This went on every day, until we moved on to the next book, and it’s one of my favorite things that happened during my time in the classroom. ANIMAL FARM is a very funny book, written in a breezy fairy-tale voice, and this is an essential quality of what makes it so good.
When we read ANIMAL FARM, the fable, I ask my students why the animals were so easily deceived. Why couldn’t they see what was happening right before their eyes, what is so plain to us readers? There isn’t just one answer. The animals were uneducated, for the most part illiterate, and unable to clearly track Napoleon’s actions against their history and laws. Every action had a reasonable enough explanation, repeated often enough until it gained the assumption of truth. Napoleon exuded a persona of crass strength, and that appealed to animals who could not defend themselves. They had shared rituals and symbols, binding them together as a movement and culture. The changes came slowly and gradually. Most importantly, they had good reason to fear the spectre of Mr. Jones. Their lives had been bad, and they had someone offering them a compelling vision of a better future. Stories like this have played out countless times across history, at large and small scales. They’re happening today, across the globe.
These insights, obvious as they are, tend to get obscured behind the stark image of allegory. If you’re looking in the text for Soviet Russia, you aren’t likely to see yourself. Opening it up, though, can be messy; fables are more malleable than allegories. “Napoleon is Lenin” is a clear answer, and when you take away the clear answers, you raise the possibility of odd interpretations.
ANIMAL FARM was first published in 1945. Memories of Lenin were still fresh (or fresh enough), and even if the parallels weren’t clear, Orwell left no room for doubt in his introduction. Orwell, a dedicated socialist, was writing a cautionary tale about authoritarianism.
Nine years later, ANIMAL FARM became an animated film. The adaptation followed the plot accurately, for the most part, but it had some interesting shifts. The narrator makes it clear that the farm had fallen on hard times, and Mr Jones was “beset by problems of his own making.” Whereas the book makes clear the problem with Mr Jones is his nature as a human, the film repeatedly calls him a “tyrant.” When the animals attempt to spread the message of Animalism to nearby farms, they find some animals “content with their lives, unimpressed with tales of peace and plenty,” again suggesting that the problem was Mr. Jones, rather than any underlying structural deficiencies in farm life. Snowball’s grand vision, of a windmill that will distribute productivity gains evenly and free them of hard labor, is made absurd, as he proclaims the coming of a “one-day workweek.” There are some interesting art choices, such as depicting Old Major (the stand-in for Karl Marx) with features that could only be called “Churchhillian.” Most notably, the story was given a new ending, where animals from nearby farms learn of Napoleon’s oppressive regime, storm the farm to aid their fellow animals, and end the threat of communism once and for all. This film was funded by the CIA.
In 1999, ANIMAL FARM returned to the screen in live-action made-for-TV film. The animals are portrayed using the techniques pioneered a few years earlier in BABE, and the result is very weird and weirdly compelling. Again, the basic plot beats are the same, with a few revisions. In this version, the sheepdog Jessie (no more than a background character in the book) is elevated to protagonist, because we all love sheepdogs and, again, to capitalize on the success of BABE. The song “Beasts of England” is replaced with “Beasts of the World,” a decision that’s confusing until you reach the end. This time, there’s no sign of a CIA-induced revolt against communism. The film recreates Orwell’s original ending, before adding a new flash forward. Years later, Jessie returns to what remains of the farm, which has been abandoned and fallen apart, and she vows to rebuild. The story is given the “end of history” treatment.
But history didn’t end for long, and neither would ANIMAL FARM. In November 2002, NYC-based indie press Roof Books released SNOWBALL’S CHANCE, an unofficial and unsanctioned sequel to Orwell’s original novel written by John Reed (Roof Books billed this as a “parody” in an attempt to skirt copyright laws, to some success; they did get to publish the book). Here, Snowball returns to the farm and implements capitalism. The animals build a second windmill (which they call, of course, the “Twin Mills”), and with the economic boom of this project, they rebrand their home as “Animal Fair,” a giant theme park. This is profitable, so they expand, colonizing the nearby farms and converting that land into more theme parks. Eventually they encroach on the wetland home of some beavers, religious fanatics who retaliate by chewing through and knocking down the windmills. Reed began writing this novel a few weeks after 9/11, and he completed the manuscript in fourteen days.4
In 2021, ANIMAL FARM entered the public domain,5 and we’ll likely be seeing more variations and continuations on the tale, at a quickening pace. Already there’s BEASTS OF ENGLAND by Adam Biles and ANIMAL FARM 2 by Martin Knox. A new animated film, directed by Andy Serkis, is set to release later this year. In an interview, Serkis explained “the approach is, if Orwell were writing ANIMAL FARM today, what would he be talking about? What would he be satirizing?” Despite a July 2025 release date, there’s been no trailer and no images released. Yet it’s easy to imagine Serkis giving us a fat Napoleon, skin an unnaturally orange hue and a comically oversized necktie dragging several feet behind him, with a loud and obnoxious personality and a rambling, elementary-school style of speech. Just imagine that Napoleon, in a whiny, high-pitched voice:
“Snowball! What a weak little big. More like snow-flake. That’s what I like to call him, snowflake, he’s just a sad little snowflake. Doesn’t make a very good windmill! It always falls over. In league with Jones! Just a bad pig, not like you good animals! All animals are equal, I always say that, all animals are equal, but…” the CGI, motion-caputred pig smirks into the camera. “Some are a little more equal than others.” He smiles, and the sheeps bleat.
I love ANIMAL FARM. It’s the only book I ever taught at multiple schools, and I found that, whether in a conservative, moderate, or progressive community, the book consistently resonated with students. I don’t begrudge any storyteller who recasts ANIMAL FARM in their own political image, be that capitalism, global free-trade, anarchism, anticapitalism, or something else6; stories exist to be retold and reinvented, and I think it’s to Orwell’s credit, and to the elegant simplicity of his tale, that so many strangely divergent views find their reflection in it. Yet, I also find these revisions a bit unnecessary. Orwell’s original novel already says everything one could possibly need about power and deception, about lies and dashed hopes for a better life. There’s a deep humanity in the story, which stands on its own. We are, after all, just animals.
Opinions will vary as to the extent this explanation works. I do think NARNIA as a supposal is marginally more interesting than NARNIA as an allegory, and it's also hinted at in the text. In one book, Aslan says something to the effect of "I'm known by a different name in your world." But I also think Lewis is kind of cheating here. The book is treated as an allegory in popular imagination, and part of that is due to people's general lack of literary skills, but also... functionally, it's basically an allegory. I'm also on record for thinking that Narnia is overrated, but that's a topic for another day.
https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/type0275.html#townsend
Thankfully, they ignored "La Cucaracha" and just sang it to the tune of "Clementine."
Reed seems like an odd guy. He once criticized Orwell, stating “there’s a lot of reasons Orwell’s considered such a saint in England, but he was steeped in colonialism . . . the idea that pigs are more intelligent is justification of the ruling class.” As if “pigs should rule because they’re smarter” wasn’t explicitly the villain’s argument. Based on his statements, it seems he really did believe this was a parody – he says he wanted to “annihilate” Orwell, who he blamed for 9/11. He also complained that Orwell never mentioned the Nazis or the Japanese (sorry he didn’t rewrite the entire first half of the 20th century with animals!). I don't think most readers would approach SNOWBALL’S CHANCE this way. It reads like a straightforward continuation of the story with a political ideology that, frankly, isn't too different, unless you somehow think Orwell is pro-capitalism. And, maybe Reed does? But then, he also said, in response to the Orwell Estate’s lawsuit against him, that he thought Orwell would more likely be on his side than with the lawyers in their offices. This isn’t much of a legal theory, nor is it consistent with his stated views on the guy.
In Europe. It seems like the US situation is a bit more complicated, but the gates opened nonetheless.
Not to say each of those accurately reflects the text. After all, all interpretations are equal, but some interpretations are... well, you get it.