Animal Farm Essay

In the story, Animal Farm by George Orwell he tells a novel which is an allegory from the Russian Revolution and they are very similar which took place between 1920 and 1930. Something they also have in common is the Communist Soviet Union which can be seen throughout the book from the animals. Moving forward, Orwell wrote Animal Farm in 1942 and he was disappointed at the time with the Soviet Communism that was going on around that period. In the novel, there is a historical context between Stalin and Russian communists that deceived the revolution and wanted something different. Orwell historical context expresses sorrow of the Russian Revolution through his allegory characters.

At the beginning of chapter one in Animal Farm the reader

is introduced to the Farmer Mr. Jones the owner of the farm. However, the animals feel like John is too bossy and demanding too much daily. The animals feel like more like a prisoner than animals “No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.”(Orwell 7) Eventually, the animal believes its time for a change before it gets worse. In this chapter, we can compare Mr. Jones to Czar Nicholas II due to his characteristics shown throughout the book. Orwell shows this comparison when saying,
"Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not
give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he
cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the
animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that
will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself. Our
labour tills the soil, our dung fertilises it, and yet there is not one of
us that owns more than his bare skin.” (Orwell 7)
Orwell does a great great job here comparing Nicolas as a man who really didn’t care about his people and the way they lived in poverty in other words selfish.

He compares the animals being the people and the hard labor they did for little in return. Mr. Jones lived like a king in the farm because the animals did all the hard labor and he got a full commission in return for the goods. “I am not prepared to be a tsar. I never wanted to become one. I know nothing of the business of ruling.”(Nicolas II) Since the majority of the times, he only thought about himself and not the other people. Which I believe it’s true because he just wanted to take over people but didn’t care for others like Czar. “Over the course of WWI, Russia endured major losses and was subject to extreme poverty and high inflation. The Russian public blamed Nicholas II for his poor military decisions, and Empress Alexandra for her ill-advised role in government.” (Nicolas II) As a reader, you can clearly see where Orwell comes up with the comparison. This shows how Nicolas was a selfish emperor due to his bad decisions it leads to war.

Works Cited

“Nicholas II.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 20 Mar. 2018, www.biography.com/people/nicholas-ii-21032713.

Shaw, Tony. "'Some Writers Are More Equal Than Others': George Orwell, the State, and Cold War Privilege." Cold War History, vol. 4, no. 1, Oct. 2003, pp. 143-170. EBSCOhost, cos.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=11413162&site=ehost-live.

Orwell, George. Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. New York, NY: Signet Classics, [1996. Print.