Literary Analysis – Animal Farm

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Animal Farm is a novel by George Orwell. It is a novel based on the communist take-over of Russia on the heels of World War II. Orwell depicts this historical event in the novel because it is about a group of animals who rebel against their cruel master, but are soon overcome by corruption. The major theme in this novel is that power corrupts people. I think that Orwell is trying to tell us that even people who start out very idealistic can become corrupted. You can see this in how the pigs start out with Old Major's vision but are exactly like the people (oppressive) by the end of the book. Another theme to keep in mind is history is bound to repeat itself if one is ignorant to the past. The animals had disregarded their prior knowledge of the events that had occurred and the emotions that conveyed those events, so history was set into the same cycle once again. Never be ignorant to the past, or you can't help yourself in the future. The first code and convention I can identify in the novel is symbolism. An example of this would be the windmill. The windmill represents the massive infrastructure construction projects and modernization initiatives that Soviet leaders instituted immediately after the Russian Revolution. In Animal Farm, the windmill also comes to symbolize the pigs' totalitarian triumph: the other animals work to build the windmill thinking it will benefit everyone, and even after it benefits only the pigs the animals continue to believe that it benefits all the animals. The second code and convention I can identify is stereotypes. Orwell represents Joseph Stalin through an image of the pig Napoleon. Through the existing stereotypes of this animal in popular culture, he intends to portray the greed, laziness and viciousness of this evil ruler of the Soviet Union. Pigs are stereotyped as “dirty”, as their pig sties are usually covered in mud and
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