Animal Farm
When the mistreated animals of Manor Farm rise up and drive out their drunken human owner, they establish a new order founded on a single, hopeful principle: all animals are equal. Led by the pigs, the most clever of the animals, the farm is renamed and the beasts set about running their world for their own benefit.
But power reshapes those who hold it. As the ambitious boar Napoleon consolidates control, the founding ideals are quietly rewritten, dissent is punished, and the promises of the revolution curdle into a tyranny that looks unsettlingly like the one it replaced. The other animals, loyal and hardworking, struggle to remember how things were meant to be.
George Orwell's short, savage fable uses a barnyard uprising to trace how revolutions are betrayed, how language is bent to serve power, and how easily the many can be ruled by the few. First published in 1945, it remains one of the most enduring political allegories ever written.
The Berkshire boar who takes control of the farm after the rebellion and rewrites its rules to suit himself.
The drunken farmer of Manor Farm, driven out by the animals in the rebellion that opens the book.
An idealistic pig and rival to Napoleon.
A persuasive pig who serves as the regime's propagandist.
The cart-horse whose strength and loyalty keep the farm running, and whose answer to every setback is to work harder.
George Orwell wrote Animal Farm as an allegory for the Russian Revolution and the subsequent rise of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. The characters and events in the book directly parallel key figures and historical moments from that period.
Animal Farm is widely considered a classic due to its enduring relevance as a political satire and its powerful critique of totalitarianism. It is frequently studied in schools and universities for its literary merit and historical significance.
Animal Farm has been adapted into animated films, including a notable British version from 1954 and an American television film from 1999. These adaptations offer different visual interpretations of Orwell's allegorical narrative.