Animal Farm as a Fable Essay -- Animal Farm

Animal Farm as a caption   Traditional fables are moral stories that usu tout ensembley feature animals. Aesops Fables, which are likely the most well known, tell tales about animals that have clearly military personnel characteristics, like the sly fox, the patient crow and the selfish dog. Since Aesops stories have been told for all over 2,500 years, they are clearly a form well suited to carnal knowledge a universal truth in a way that is accessible to children and memorable for adults. In writing Animal Farm, Orwell wanted to express a particular set of ideas about revolutions - ideas that he thought were more or less universal. The success of the book since its publication would seem to indicate that he had the right idea.   The plot of Animal Farm is clearly based on the events of the Russian Revolution. Old Majors ideas about animalism correspond to those of Karl Marx, and the way in which they are taken up and put into action represents the activitie s of Leon Trotsky (Snowball) and a compounding of Lenin and Stalin (Napoleon). The haphazard nature of the rebellion closely parallels the opportunistic response to events that brought the Bolsheviks to precedent in 1917, and the news report of the farm roughly follows events in European history up to the Second World War. The fact that we are still course session Animal Farm long after these events have passed into history over again suggests something of Orwells achievement.   The fable format allowed Orwell to reduce complicated events to a level that most anyone could understand - the workings of the Russian Politburo or of the NKVD (the secret police) are mingled matters but the story of Squealer and Napoleons trained dogs is much more accessible. Similarly, the lives an... ...such as when he speaks of Squealer, who had unaccountably been absent during the fighting. Again, young readers are likely to be intimate this kind of statement where the real mea ning is only slightly down the stairs the surface.   Fables are meant to have a moral, and the moral of Animal Farm is that all revolutions fail in the end. Orwell could have written a long hear expressing such ideas but it is doubtful that many wad would now be reading it. The success of Animal Farm is that it tells the sad tale of a group of creatures we care about, and how their hopes and dreams were dashed. Beyond the surface story, however, is the substance that for ordinary people revolutions simply change one set of rulers for another. It is a depressing message but people are prepared to listen to it because it is told in a simple and entertaining way like all the best fables.