George Orwells Animal Farm :: George Orwell Animal Farm Essays

George Orwell's Animal Farm Introduction:Animal Farm is a short story written by George Orwell in 1945. He had a lot of difficulty getting it published due to its underlying criticism of the political situation in Russia at the time. The story takes place on a farm somewhere in England. The owner of the farm, Mr.Jones, comes into conflict with the animals. The animals rebel, and finally scare him away. Two of the strongest animals, Napoleon and Snowball (two pigs), think that they can run the farm. Napoleon: Both Napoleon and Snowball felt that they should both be leaders in the early stages of the Revolution. Snowball had many ideas about how the Farm should be run but he came into conflict with Napoleon over many of them. Napoleon, was a shrewd pig who could see that he could not carry on working with Snowball. This was shown when the two of them could not agree on the building of a windmill.When it looked as though Snowball might win the arguement, Napoleon "uttered a high-pitched whimper of a kind no one had ever heard him utter before" and the vicious dogs ran in and attacked Snowball and ran him off the farm. Eventually Napoloeon won and the windmill was built, and soon after Napoleon ran Snowball off the farm. In order to make sure that he would stay leader in the future, Napoleon told the animals that Snowball was against them and was friendly with the old farm owner, Mr.Jones. The similarity between Napoleon and Joseph Stalin (the Russian leader), is very clear. Without being elected both became leaders, surrounding themselves with powerful guards (the dogs in the case of Napoloeon), living in luxury while the workers were forced to work hard. At first Napoleon seemed to be a good leader, but very quickly became greedy and power-mad, causing conflict among the animals. As in Russia, the idea of Socialism soon changed to a virtual dictatorship, with Napoleon ordering animals to build and work while he sat around. When some of the other animals decided that he should no longer be a leader, Napoleon set the dogs on them and had them slaughtered. He had become power mad, going totally against the ideas of socialism, and ruling through fear, as did Stalin. As time went on, he became like Mr.Jones, caring for himself without thinking about the others, which was partly the reason for the original Revolution. Food rations were under his control, making sure that he got plently but the animals got just enough to keep them working. Soon after the Revolution the animals got together to make seven commandments that they should all stick to, but Napoleon slowly