Animal Farm - George Orwell

This is an allegorical and dystopian novella which depicts a group of farm animals revolting and establishing their own society. It addresses the philosophy of the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Eric Arthur Blair also known as George Orwell was a democratic socialist and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism.

There was a certain awkwardness in reviewing a work which gives depth to its content. The conundrum would be saying, forming words and putting them together. When things are too big to judge for one, speechless would be the condition.

After the establishment of their own society, the pigs make seven commandments for all the animals on the farm, being the clever ones, called it Animalism, quite similar to Communalism. These commandments are made to prevent chaos and to stand against the humans and to stay away from their evil habits. Eventually things take a turn and certainly not the right one.

"All animals are equal but 

some animals are more equal than others."

This becomes the only commandment in the end and the "more equal" ones are the pigs who run the land and the law on the farm. Most of the characters represent either a person, several people or groups of people, like Old Major who fuels the Rebellion is an allegorical combination of Karl Marx and Lenin. The main antagonist Napoleon represents Joseph Stalin. The characters are of course animals yet it is easy to sympathise with them. The author made them quite realistic which ends up giving a certain darkness to it and some grief, all the more reason to appreciate the construction of such a satire during the wartime alliance of UK with the Soviet Union.

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man,

and from man to pig, and from pig to man again;

but it already was impossible to say which was which."