Animal Farm as an Allegory (Essay Sample)

The book Animal Farm by George Orwell is an allegory. The setting of the book is in England around 1917 to 1945. The historical significance of this book is that all of the characters serve an important role as a person or people in the Russian Revolution. The book's theme is how global leaders can manipulate the people by lying and by making laws to suit their wants and needs. Furthermore totalitarianists such as Napoleon are liars and will arrange anything to get their way even if it comes to breaking the law. Finally absolute power does lead to corruption considering once someone gets a little power they always want more. More often than not it's always the wrong people that are in power such as Russia.

The allegory Animal Farm is a great example of totalitarianism, and how leaders manipulate their people. One example of this is when Napoleon changed and broke the commandments that every animal must follow. One of the commandments that he broke was that all animals are equal. The unjust ruler Napoleon was not the only one doing this though, there were also all of the other pigs and the dogs. Them not doing any work it was like they were living in luxury at the cost of all of the other animals being overworked. The pigs that are “More equal” changed the commandments to help themselves and not think about all of the others. Some of the varied important ones that they changed was that all animals are equal, and anything that walks on two legs is substandard. There were  more that were not as important such as no animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets. This just showed that they change the rules for themselves. Unfortunately while the pigs were living their best life while numerous animals suffered. The uttermost of them were starving, extremely tired, and overworked. Due to that the farm's best worker Boxer split his hoof. This led to his death by being sent to the Knacker. 

All over it shows that absolute power leads to corruption in every country or kingdom. Obviously Napoleon ruined all of the animals' lives. An excellent example of this is when the author said, “Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or worse hunger, hardship, and disappointment.” (130-131) Even while Jones was still on the farm all of the animals despised him. Such as being lazy, irresponsible, and always being drunk. The miserable animals' lives were the same. This shows that Napoleon ruined their chance at freedom by cause of his power over everyone on the farm. They soon realized that giving one animal all of the power was not a wonderful idea. On top of all of the terrible actions done due to him being in power he killed several animals on the spot when they were confused about breaking the commandments. (84) This could have been prevented by him thinking about others for once since his views are not the same as the others. And it eventually leads to corruption.

Overall, the theme is that communist leaders can conceive people into believing in a cause then pull the rug and betray them. Also how absolute power corrupts anything. As it was stated before how Napoleon changed the rules, and made the animals miserable, so he paid Moses to give the animals hope when they die by talking about Sugarcandy Mountain. Also how absolute power corrupts a country on behalf of different beliefs and views on politics and how conditions are handled and taken care of.