Animal Farm

             Symbolism of Animal Farm.
             Orwell's characters in Animal Farm symbolize Marx, Stalin, and Trotsky, the leaders of the Russian Revolution. These animals or "Manor Farm", which symbolizes Russia, overthrow their human master after years of mistreatment. It is in the pigs that the political allegory takes its most precise form (Sedley 57). Led by the pigs, the farm animals continue to do their work. Only now they do it with more pride knowing that they are working for themselves, as opposed to working for their human master, Farmer Jones. Slowly over time the pigs gain power and take advantage of the other animals. They gain so much power that they become just as power hungry and corrupt as their human master. .
             Using the symbolism that is in the book with similarities found in the Russian Revolution very easily shows the comparison between the animals and the Russian Leaders. The most important animals are three pigs- Old Major, Napoleon, and Snowball. .
             "He was twelve years old and had lately grown rather stout, but he was still a majestic- looking pig, with wise and benevolent appearance in spite of the fact that his tushes had never been cut" (Orwell 16). Old Major is a favorite of all the animals on the farm, and his speeches were to lead to the animal revolution. Old Major can be easily compared to Karl Marx and Lenin, whose ideas and speeches led to the communist revolution. Major's speech is an accurate exposition of orthodox Marxism and is very similar to the last paragraph of the Communist Manifesto (Meyers 105). Like Old Major, Marx and Lenin gave speeches to the hard working and poor. The working class of Russia, as compared to the animals at the farm, were a working class that received harsh treatment and little income for their work.
             The villain of Animal Farm, unlike those of Othello or Nineteen Eighty-Four, is always pellucidly open, often derisively so-we never fear Napoleon as we do Iago and Big Brother (Reilly 64).