Animal Farm by George Orwell

Animal Farm by George Orwell is the classic allegory of the false hopes of Soviet Communism. The sympathetic story of the animals who hope for a ideal farm, run by animals and for animals, turns into a nightmare of oppression by the pigs who become their new masters. It was a prescient and insightful book which deserves to be cherished by freedom loving people.

The book shows the evil of propaganda, revisionist history and twisted laws. We feel for the hardworking, long-suffering Boxer who gives his life for the farm, and are repulsed by the selfish, heartless pigs who are ready to take advantage of him.

However, there are some glaring shortcomings of the book.

The Animal Farm run by the pigs is no better than the previous Manor Farm run by the human, Mr. Jones. But in the final chapter Orwell has the farm being still successful by those same human standards. Being written in 1945, Orwell does not anticipate the failure and internal collapse of Soviet Communism 40 years later. The farm actually becomes a model of productivity and efficiency to the human-led farms around them, albeit at the expense of the lower animals. The last paragraph, where Napoleon is caught cheating at cards, may be a hint of that future collapse, but it is only a hint.

Orwell also offers no counter philosophy that proves why the pigs are wrong. They are inherently smarter and more capable than the other animals. The reader feels a moral revulsion that they would use their abilities to take advantage of those less intelligent than them, but Orwell has nothing equivalent to the theologically-based statement in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. The raven is the sole religious figure who talks of the glorious Sugarcandy Mountain, but he is a crackpot and simpleton who offers no real help to the suffering animals and gathers no following.

Finally, Orwell does not show any of the lesser animals actually standing up to their oppressors. There is no hope for another revolution to reject their new pig overlords. The reader comes away convinced that the first revolution was a failure, but does not see any way out of the current situation.