Out of all the books I have ever read, George Orwell's Animal Farm has probably left one of the biggest impressions on me. It tells the story of some overworked, mistreated animals who take over the Manor Farm from its cruel owner, Jones, and “with flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality." They change the name of Manor Farm to Animal Farm, and establish it as a community where all animals are equal. Two pigs, Napoleon and Snowball, fight for control of the revolution as the neighboring humans continually attack the animals and are beaten off. Eventually Napoleon ousts Snowball and declares him a traitor; then makes an alliance with the human enemy and uses it to establish his dictatorship. While, in the beginning of the book, there were Seven Commandments of the revolution, soon the other animals learn that there is only one commandment: that all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

George Orwell, the author, went to Spain to fight for the government that Stalin’s murderous apparatchiks had gained partial control of in 1937. He believed that the government represented political decency, but by chance he often ended up in a Trotskyist outfit while Stalin was trying to destroy any trace that Trotsky had contributed to the Russian revolution. It had deadly consequences, even in Spain. “Many of our friends were shot, and others spent a long time in prison, or simply disappeared,” Orwell wrote in his preface to a 1947 Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm. Having escaped so narrowly from the long reach of Stalin, he became alarmed about the gullibility of other well meaning people in the West. Out of this fear, he began his attack on the mythical nobility of Soviet communism.

There is no doubt that this book is, at its core, a political allegory. But it is also “a political tract, a satire on human folly, a loud hee-haw at all who yearn for Utopia, an allegorical lesson, and a pretty good fable in the Aesop tradition.” (Preface, pg. 6) The hardworking animals represent the peasants of Russia, Jones represents the Czars that were overthrown, and Napoleon and Snowball undoubtedly represent Stalin and Trotsky. The windmill that is constantly being built and rebuilt represents the fantastic new technology that seemed to make it easy to enslave every individual.

As I read this book, I became intrigued by how the animals constantly believed in whatever Napoleon or Squealer said. They lived in complete ignorance, except for perhaps Benjamin the donkey, who mournfully believed that “life would go on as it had always gone on--that is, badly.” Boxer’s fate, not being prevented because of their ignorance, is one of the greatest tragedies in this book that also happened all too often in Soviet Russia. But it is because of this purposeless cruelty that Animal Farm has its razor sharp edge. It reminds us that whatever century we’re in, whenever freedom is attacked, no matter by whom; we cannot stick our heads in the sand and wave a white flag. It is for this reason that Animal Farm will continue to have fresh meaning for every generation.

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