Animal Farm: Political Issues

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also been known as a an enter-taining, witty tale of a
farm whose oppressed animals, capable of speech and reason, overcome a cruel
master and set up a revolutionary government(Meyers 103). On another, more
serious level, it is a political allegory, a symbolic tale where all the events
and characters represent events and characters in Russian history since
1917(Meyers 103).

Orwell uses actual historical events to construct Animal Farm, but
rearranges them to fit his plot. Manor Farm is Russia, Mr. Jones the Tsar, the
pigs the Bolsheviks who led the revolution. The humans represent the ruling
class, the animals the workers and the peasants. Old Major, the inspiration of
the rebellion, is a combination of Marx, the chief theorist and Lenin, the
actual leader(Meyers 105). Old Major dies before the rebellion just as Lenin did
in the Russian revolution. In actuality Stalin and Trotsky argue over power
after Lenin's death, which Orwell satirizes in Napolean and Snowball.

In Animal ...

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device.
Their different alterations resemble the pigs' progressive rise to power. The
pigs' gradual acquisition of priveleges- apples, milk, house, whisky, beer,
clothes- leads to the final identification of pig and human, Communist and
capitalist(Gardner 101).

The blurring of the past and the hardening shape of the present, grim,
greedy, or just pragmatic, are accompanied by betrayal of the spirit of the
revolution exemplified in the ammendments made into the "Seven Commandments" of
"Animalism"(Gardner 102). Costantly these are changed by one of the deceiving
pigs, Squealer. The puzzled animals can not figure out with trying to keep pace
with the pigs increasing authority. So the ...

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