Animal Farm

1. Animal Farm • Author: George Orwell • His real name is Eric Blair. He was born an English citizen in 1903, in Bengal, India where his parents lived.

2. Animal Farm • Orwell was a political writer and wrote about the social ills of the strict class structure of England. He was a socialist, believing in total equality for all citizens.

3. Animal Farm • He saw first hand the corruption of communism in Spain when those in power began to take advantage of the citizens.

4. Animal Farm • His hatred of totalitarianism and the abuse he witnessed in the name of communism prompted him to write the “fairy story” Animal Farm.

5. Fable • Fable: A usually short narrative making an edifying or cautionary point and often employing as characters animals that speak and act like humans.

6. Allegory • Allegory-The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.

7. Allegory, continued • An allegory may be a symbolic representation: The blindfolded figure with scales is an allegory of justice. Look at the background of this slide.

8. Satire • Satire-A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit. Irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidity.

9. Propaganda • Propaganda-the systematic attempt to spread ideas or beliefs. The information given in propaganda may or may not be accurate.

10. Propaganda, continued • Facts that support the ideas being promoted will be given accurately. Facts that contradict the ideas being promoted will be withheld or distorted.

11. Stereotypes • Pigs have a bad name for selfishness and gluttony.

12. Stereotypes • Horses are slow-witted, strong, gentle, and loyal.

13. Stereotypes • Sheep are brainless and behave as a flock, without individual initiative.

14. Farmer Jones Czar Nicholas II Characters

15. Old Major Karl Marx Characters

16. Snowball Trotsky Characters

17. Napoleon Stalin Characters

18. Dogs KGB-secret police Characters

19. Moses Church(religion) Characters

20. Moses • Moses represents the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. To Orwell, the Church is just used as a tool by the dictatorship to keep the working class people hopeful and productive.

21. Boxer • Boxer (named for the Boxer Revolution in China that marked the beginning of Communism in China) represents the unskilled labor class in Russia.

22. Squealer • Squealer represents the Pravda, the Russian newspaper of the 1930’s. Like the newspaper, Squealer is the link between Napoleon and the other animals. He is the spreader of the propaganda.

23. Mollie • Mollie is the animal who is most opposed to the new government under Napoleon. She represents the middle-class skilled worker who suffers from the communism concept.

24. Major Conflicts • Animals versus Mr. Jones • Snowball versus Napoleon • Common animals versus pigs • Animal Farm versus neighboring humans, but…

25. Major Conflicts • All are expressions of the underlying tension between the exploited and exploiting classes and between the lofty ideals and harsh realities of socialism

26. Other minor characters • Pilkington-Churchill/England • Frederick-Hitler (after Frederick the Great whom Hitler admired)

27. Animal Farm • The Setting: • The novel takes place on the Manor Farm, which is initially run as a capitalistic dictatorship by Mr. Jones.

28. Animal Farm, the setting • After the animals revolt and drive Mr. Jones away, the farm is renamed Animal Farm. • The novel takes place on an imaginary farm in England.

29. Animal Farm, the setting • As is the case with most fables, Animal Farm is set in an unspecified time period and is largely free from historical references that would allow the reader to date the action precisely.

30. Animal Farm, the setting • Readers can assume that Orwell means the fable to be contemporaneous with the object of its satire, the Russian Revolution, 1917-1945.

31. Point of View • Third person uninvolved narrator—unlimited, omniscient

32. Rising Action • The animals overthrow the human oppressors and establish a socialist state called Animal Farm;

33. Rising Action • The pigs ( the most intelligent of the animals) take control of the planning and government of the farm;

34. Rising Action • Snowball (Trotsky) and Napoleon (Stalin) engage in ideological disputes and compete for power.

35. Other minor characters • Minimus-Mayakovsky was the leading poet of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and of the early Soviet period, one of the founders of Russian Futurism movement.

36. Other minor Characters • Whymper represents western • businessmen and journalists of the revolutionary period.

37. Climax • Napoleon runs Snowball off the farm with his trained pack of dogs (secret police) and declares that the power to make decisions for the farm will be exercised solely by the pigs (The Bolsheviks).

38. Falling Action • Squealer (Pravda; Soviet propagandists) emerges to justify Napoleon’s actions with skillful but duplicitous reinterpretations of Animalist principles;

39. Falling Action • Napoleon continues to consolidate his power, eliminating his enemies and reinforcing his status as supreme leader

40. Falling Action • The common animals continue to obey the pigs, hoping for a better future.

41. Theme • Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work

42. Themes • The corruption of socialist ideals in the Soviet Union;

43. Themes • the societal tendency toward class stratification;

44. Themes • the danger of a naïve working class;

45. Themes • the abuse of language as instrumental to the abuse of power

46. Themes • Absolute power absolutely corrupts.

47. Symbols/Metaphors • Manor Farm symbolizes Russia and the Soviet Union under Communist Party rule.

48. Symbols/Metaphors • Animal Farm stands for any human society with a government (the pigs/Jones), with a police force/army (dogs), a working class (animals), with state holidays and rituals.

49. Symbols/Metaphors • The windmill represents progress and industrialization.

50. Symbols/Metaphors • The sheep’s bleating represents the mindless acceptance of authority.