What category is Animal Farm?
Animal Farm can be considered a fable based on Orwell's use of simple language and animal characters that teach readers a moral or a lesson. Finally, Animal Farm is also considered a satire.
George Orwell's Animal Farm is one of the best-known examples of animal fable, a symbolic narrative in which animal characters are endowed with human qualities.
Instead of creating human characters to represent the revolution in Russia, he personified animals to turn it into a fable. The result is a satire that is as amusing as it is disturbing. The following will discuss more about allegory, fable, and satire and why Animal Farm can fit into all of these genres.
What is Animal Farm about? Animal Farm is a commentary on the development of Russian communism under Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) delivered in allegorical form.
Animal Farm is primarily a political satire. It contains talking animals but only as a plot device; it is not set in a fantasy world.
Animal Farm represents the Russian Revolution of 1917. Old Major represents Karl Marx, Snowball represents Leon Trotsky, Napoleon represents Josef Stalin, Squealer represents propaganda, and Boxer is a representation for all the Russian laborers and workers.
In his short novel Animal Farm (1945), English author George Orwell (1903–50) allegorizes the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the tsarist autocracy was pushed out and the Bolsheviks came into power, and the revolution's incremental betrayal of its supporters under dictator Joseph Stalin (1879–1953).
The book echoes the idea that all power can contain an element of corruptibility. Perhaps the leaders, the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, started out well-meaning, however once they realized that all of the animals listened to them without thinking, they started to abuse their power.
The purpose of the satire expressions in the Animal Farm novel is to criticize government policies. The government's policies are inhumane because the people are forced to achieve their goals, and the satire expressions in this novel also show how the government gains its power using cunning means.
Animal Farm's dictatorial leader, Napoleon, is an allusion to Joseph Stalin. George Orwell consistently makes references to Napoleon's harsh rule and ever-increasing bravado, traits which characterized Stalin's rule over Soviet Russia.
What's the difference between a fable and an allegory?
Note: A fable is a short story that conveys a simple moral or message. It can be written in verse or prose. Allegory is a book, poem, or painting that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning.
Orwell chose to write Animal Farm as a fable, that used animals as characters, rather than a straight-forward political allegory, or a story that used symbols to represent political ideas or events, because he wanted to make his story more accessible and easier to understand for a wider audience.
