The animals revolted against human rules and cruelty and started to rule themselves alone.

They all live according to the Seven Commandments of an old pig Major, who led the revolution but who died shortly thereafter. New leader Napoleon, also a pig, changed Major’s orders, led the pigs to superiority and brought totalitarian manners.

Although the title of the book suggests the book is merely about animals, the story is a much more in depth analysis of the workings of society in Communist Russia. The animals are used as puppets to illustrate how the communist class system operated, how Russian citizens responded to this, and how early Russian leaders such as Stalin used propaganda, and the effect this type of leadership had on the behaviour of the people of Russia.

Animal Farm was written between November 1943 and February 1944. Orwell knew it would be difficult to find a publisher for it because the left-wing publishers who had brought out his earlier work were quite unwilling to publish this book because of its criticism of Stalin (in the character of the pig, Napoleon). It was finally published in August 1945, and has never been out of print since.

Telling a story about animals is a very old method for the story-teller to say something about humans, since it is possible to keep the reader aware that the story is working on two different levels at the same time: the animals are both animals and also stand for human beings whom the author is laughing at or satirising. A very clear example of this in Animal Farm is Major’s speech to the other animals, which expresses Marx’s view of history as a struggle between groups-in the book case between humans and animals (from the point of view of the animals, as Orwell said)-and --can also clearly be applied to two groups of human beings, with the animals here standing for the proletariat in contrast to the ruling classes.

Orwell described Animal Farm as being “the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole”, and the animal story and the political story it tells work together throughout the book.

Many of the characters and events in the book can also be understood on two levels. Major, as well as being an old boar, expresses in very simple terms the beliefs of Marx and Lenin, who established the principles of the Russian Revolution. Napoleon can stand for Stalin, who led the Soviet Union during the 1930’s and the Second World War.