Animal+Farm

=//Animal Farm//= =George Orwell.= =128 Pages. Penguin Group (USA) Inc. $13.00=

A Peculiar Dystopia
By Chris Mathy

Adrenaline, secrecy, victory, and freedom are all found in the classic tale of rebellion. Unfortunately, revolution doesn’t always end well. Through //Animal Farm//, George Orwell puts the many temptations and mishaps of rebellion, and the subsequent self-government, on center stage. But Orwell presents his dystopia in a very different way than those authors that primarily use human characters: He softens the impact of the terrors of the book by using animals as rebels rather than men.

Written soon after the Russian Revolution, Orwell cleverly anthropomorphizes common farm animals to give the reader a straightforward view of the rise of communism in Russia. The animals play the parts of the revolutionaries, overthrowing the humans and running their farm themselves. The pigs, the smartest animals, but clearly not the strongest, portray the communists that establish their government after the rebellion against the Czar. Orwell makes the sheep and Boxer the horse the dumber animals, those that simply follow the revolution because they are told to do so. One of Boxer's personal mantras is, in fact, "Napolean is always right" (Napolean being the head pig that represents Joseph Stalin). Also, most discipline throughout the book occurs at the hands (or paws, rather) of Napolean's version of Stalin's NKVD (the secret police), a group of viscious guard dogs that he trained when they were puppies. With control of a popular mob and a police force of attack dogs, one can expect that the pigs don't rule //Animal Farm// with benevolence and justice.

//Animal Farm// frighteningly portrays the corruption that bubbles up as greed and power take over the pigs. Orwell puts you in the perspective of an onlooker who knows exactly what’s going on, but has no way of stopping it. All one can do is watch with the lesser animals (the common folk of Russia) as the joy of rebellion is gradually displaced by the cruelness of the pigs.

From this perspective, the reader starts to truly think about the futility of the lesser animals. Orwell leaves you wondering how it’s possible that anyone could be so cruel to those they once called "comrades." In fact, by the end of the book, the pigs get rid of the term comrade altogether! “Hitherto the animals on the farm had had a rather foolish custom of addressing one another as ‘Comrade’. This was to be suppressed.” This clearly shows the total transformation of the farm (and communist Russia) from a newly freed utopia to a gruesome dystopia.

Napolean is meant to be seen as a dictator, and Orwell gives him the characteristics of one. The reader looks with awe at some of the greedy decisions Napolean makes as he runs into various tempations. For example, some previously hated human habits, like drinking alcohol or sleeping in beds, were originally forbidden by a list of rules, the Seven Commandments, that the pigs came up with soon after the revolution. Orwell provides Napolean and the pigs a simple, but fitting for a dictator, way of getting around these restrictions so they may indulge themselves. Napolean sends out Squealer, a right hand pig, to simply change whichever commandment he wants to exploit. For example, Muriel the goat is reading the Seven Commandments and finds something odd. "They had thought that the Fifth Commandment was ' No animal shall drink alcohol', but there were two words that they had forgotten. Actually the Commandment read: 'No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.'"

Of course, Muriel has remembered correctly, but Orwell, with his seemingly objective, almost naïve voice, uses this example more than once to show his opinion on dictators. That is, a dictator can, unfortunately, manipulate the minds of their subjects, those that they should be leading towards prosperity, just to fulfill selfish desires. Orwell can point out these wrongs without sounding harsh or preachy, and that makes his writing enjoyable, despite the horrors of the book.

Animal Farm shows you what it's like to experience the terror of living in a dictatorship. Orwell does this brilliantly by piling up feelings of fear and futility as the reader puts themselves in the position of the common animals. One gets the sense that there is no way to change the pigs' decisions. The use of a farm to represent things as grave as the Russian Revolution and Stalin's dictatorship, Orwell's cleverness in giving each species of animal its own characteristic, and Orwell's innocent voice makes Animal Farm a very entertaining commentary on the gradual transformation of a freed farm to a gloomy dystopia.