Examples Of Allegory In Animal Farm

Animal Farm and Human Freedoms

Animal Farm, by George Orwell, is a well known literary work that also functions as an allegory to expose the terrible communist movement after the Russian Revolution. An allegory is a story that has both a literal and a metaphorical meaning. In this case, the literal meaning would be animals running a farm and the implied one is the Russian Revolution. With revolutions, one may be led to believe that the aftermath will end up being far better than the original situation. In Animal Farm however, the next situation ends up destroying their freedom and equality almost entirely. The characters don’t help either. Napoleon and Boxer, with their selfishness and their tendencies to never second guess, cause freedom and equality to be nearly destroyed in

Boxer’s behavior, which may have something to do with his low intelligence, involves him never questioning his beliefs. Never questioning one’s beliefs causes people to never change. When people never change, they may not notice something wrong happening around them even though it is very obvious. In this case with Boxer, he would never try to stop his work for Napoleon and Animal Farm. At one point, another horse, Clover, was trying to convince him to stop his hard and strenuous work on the farm but he rejects her suggestions by saying he needs to work harder for the cause of Animal Farm (Orwell 51). After the slaughter, Boxer the workhorse started to second guess his belief system, but then, he rejects that thought as well by saying, “The solution is to work harder. From now onwards I shall get up a full hour earlier in the mornings” (Orwell 70). This leads to the dismantling of the basics of freedom as he is so brainwashed by Napoleon’s inequality, he doesn’t know anything else to fight the wrongs. His ideas won’t spread and no one will pick up on what he’s hinting