"Animal Farm"

Book Review # 101177

English > Analysis
Literature > English
Political Science > Marx / Engels

"Animal Farm"

An overview of the plot, characters and allegories of George Orwell's "Animal Farm".

1,585 words () | 0 sources | 2007 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how "Animal Farm" can be considered an allegory due to the use of characters, who symbolize real-life characters and the plots, which have two meanings (the literal meaning and the symbolic meaning). The paper further looks at how Orwell used allegory in "Animal Farm" because his purpose was to show the audience the truth, which remained unknown to so many, about the Soviet system. The paper also discusses how the characters such as Snowball, Napoleon and Squealer are reflections of dictators and propaganda that were seen in Russia in the 1900s and how Boxer and Clover reflect what Karl Marx called the "proletarians", who were exploited by the upper class.

From the Paper:

"Boxer is a symbolic character due to his personality, which attracts our attention and we, as readers, are moved by the actions he takes. Orwell portrays Boxer as a symbol for the proletarian class by describing Boxer's personality indirectly, depicting his actions and carefully writing out Boxer's dialogue. For instance, Orwell tells us that Boxer, as a horse, only knows his alphabets up to D, unlike the pigs, which have learned how to read and write like a professional. When Boxer attempts to learn the following four letters; he easily forgets the first four letters of the alphabets. When the windmill is being built, Boxer is the character who is doing most of the work and as once stated, "nothing could have been achieved without Boxer", which meant that Boxer was the hard worker that pulled everyone else along. "