Animal Farm: The Meaning of Equality Essay

In George Orwells living creature Farm, he examines the impact of communism and the post-war apprehension of World War II. Orwell uses totallyegories to thoroughly beg off the pain and worry following the clash between countries. He uses invoke animals and a farm to re constitute the major events and figures in the time of totalitarianism and the Soviet Union. The animals indispensableness to loll around rid of man (Orwell 30), and man stands for capitalist society. Communism, or beastism as the animals call it, starts out as a society of equals, except gradually mutates into a dictatorship. The leaders fixd a dystopian domain where everything they had planned took a turn for the worse instead of the earlier planned utopia. All of the animals (except for the pigs/leaders) ultimately lose all of the power they believed they had gained. Post-war disquiet plays a large role in the novel, Soviet Russia, and around the world. In the years following WWII, America was consta ntly in consternation of Russia battery them and Russia was afraid that America was going to invade.In Animal Farm, the animals wake up every day with the anxiety of the humans coming back to recapture the farm. The humans (both Mr. Jones and the owners of some former(a)wise farms), on the other hand, ar afraid that their animals provide follow suit and revolt against them. Russell Baker explains how Orwell experienced the war low gear hand and how he believed that the decent raft of Western Europe were existence tricked into thinking that Soviet reality was remarkable in his Preface of Animal Farm. Orwell called the book a fable, but it is alike a satire on human folly (Russell vi) and has numerous lessons for human morality. Post-war anxiety was tremendous in both the 50s and the 60s and George Orwell found this out when he went scrutinizing for a publisher. Stalinism and the Soviet Union were so popular that neither British nor English publishers wanted to hear any cr iticism of his beliefs. It seemed analogous the West had readily put on blinders because of the defeat of Hitlers army.Everyone had a great deal of praise for the Soviet Union and its forces. Stalin and his political administration significantly benefited from all of this. Orwell marched to the beat of his own drum and has an insistence on being his own man (Russell ix). The preface to Animal Farm helps the proofreader understand why Orwell developed such a candid judge of Stalinism. Although he was a amicableist, Orwell believed that Stalin and his comrades perversely transformed the meaning of socialism and equality. Without cultivation the Preface, one would assume that this novel is simple and childish. George Orwell hid his disgust in the political terror and totalitarianism going on in Russia at the time behind the numerous farm animals in his novel. In admittance to the Preface by Russell Baker, C.M. Woodhouse tells the reader that the novel was offered to the genera l population in the same month as the atomic bombs dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Introduction.Woodhouse goes on to explain that this fairy-story (Woodhouse xix) has a moral, and teaches us lessons nearly life. It does not take step up in our world, but in a world beyond. The fairy stories atomic number 18 set in a place without good and evil. Woodhouse believes that Orwell has brought back the address equality, democracy, and peace. All of these words have been deceitfully changed into shibboleths of political warfare (Woodhouse xxii). Woodhouse overly explains that it is impossible for those that have read Animal Farm to not regularly think about the fact that some tribe are more than equal than others. He goes on to say that George Orwells novel may not alter the course of history in a nobble amount of time. It could take decades more for his novel to contribute to the world. What we do notice is that Orwell successfully predicted the future of Stalin, the Soviet Union, and his ideas. George Orwells legacy as a prophet will undoubtedly carry on for the rest of time.Post-war tenseness plays a large role in Animal Farm, and represents the tension that was present around the world in the 50s and 60s. The leaders of the farm trained fear in the animals, as did the leaders of Soviet Russia to their citizens. In the novel, the animals constantly have the fear that the neighboring farms are going to attack them and vice versa. Their apprehension forces them to go along with piles ideas because the ideas give them a false whiz of security. Napoleon also develops an anxiety that involves his fear of counter-revolutionaries, or people that want to overthrow him and the farms new ideals. Both Napoleon and Stalin kill everyone who didnt have the same morals as them. They both purged their countries of people that they considered as enemies.These visual modality executions set a miserable, melancholic tone amongst all of the citi zens of both Animal Farm and Russia. Both revolutions morphed and the children of the revolution became everything they hated. The tension and anxiety came from fear of attack, mass murders designed by the leaders, and a society where everyone was hypothetic to be equal but some were more equal than others (Orwell 133). The trio pigs in the novel, Squealer, increase, and Napoleon, all represent tyrants from Soviet Russia. They each attempt and abide by at instilling fear in the other animals on the farm. sweet sand verbena is intellectual, passionate, and also considerably less devious than Napoleon. Although Snowball gains loyalty, trust, and respect from the other animals, he still creates a hidden sense of fear at bottom the nation. His ideas and speeches are confvictimization to the animals, but they accept them without knowing what they mean exactly. On the other hand, the other pig creates fear directly.The other pig is Napoleon, and he uses his trained watchdogs, which a re his military force, to consolidate power and frighten the other animals. Napoleon is a despot in every sense of the word. He even chases off his counterpart, Snowball, using his military. When Snowball and Napoleon disagree about tropeing a wind generator, Napoleon sets his dogs loose and has them dash straight for Snowball (Orwell 67). Snowball encounters a close brush with death, until he escapes. This situation greatly troubles the other animals, and Napoleon is basically letting them know not to cross him or else they will be sentenced to death. Squealer, although not as significant as the both leaders, is the epitome of those in power who use speech and language to confidential information facts and gain control of society and the government. Squealer spreads Napoleons propaganda and barelyifies everything Napoleon says by using false truths. Squealer became so persuasive that many of the animals accepted his explanation (Orwell 72) about why Napoleon was now for the win dmill without asking any questions.Overall, Snowball, Squealer, and Napoleon are allegories for different leaders in Soviet Russia. They use techniques such as propaganda, military force, and persuasion to instill fear in the animals on the farm. There are parallels between Orwells Animal Farm and the ugly truth behind Soviet Russia. Stalin, a cruel and overbearing leader, used all three of these techniques to achieve his boilers suit goal of controlling the country. There are extreme parallels between Animal Farm and the reality of Soviet Russia. In both Soviet Russia and on the farm, tension was great and the leaders instilled fear in their citizens. The article Stalins Revolution on flowofhistory.com explains these parallels in depth. Stalin, like Napoleon, launched a campaign to build up (flowofhistory.com) his communist union. Stalin gained the support of the country by saying that everything would get much better if he was the leader.This was also Napoleons tactic. Joseph Sta lin was an highly paranoid man, as was Napoleon, and thought that everyone was conspiring against him. Napoleon used a mass execution to purge the farm of the animals that he saw as traitors. Stalin also did this. In 1936 he persecuted and executed an extreme amount of the citizens that he considered threats to his administration. In both cases the inhabitants of the areas were put on trial, but the trials were nothing but a sham. They were forced to confess their alleged crimes, and then were sentenced to death. Although communism was supposed to create a society of equals, it instead made even more social divisions. Both Russia and the farm experienced the fact that some people are just more equal than others. All of these facts led to rising political tensions (flowofhistory.com) around the world. Although the tyrants of Russia, or in this case the animals of the farm, had not tried to groom a scheming plan to take down the citizens of their country, this is what they ultimately accomplished. Stalin and his pursuit seized the power away from the working class.Just as Stalin tried to turn Russia against capitalism, the leaders of the farm try to turn the animals against humans by say them that the only good human is a dead one (Orwell 59). Although at first they stood for pure equality, they soon seemed to stand for the notion that some people are more equal than others. Orwell explains how detrimental Stalin and his cause were to Russia by using animals as an allegory and explaining the idea of communism in more simplistic terms.The leaders of Animal Farm fill the worker animals with fear just as Stalin and his comrades instilled fear into the working class of Russia. The animals were inspired by this idea of everyone being equal and this ultimately encouraged them to go along with the dictators ideas. At first, all of the animals supported the idea with their own free will but eventually only support it out of pure terror. Anxiety of the characters in A nimal Farm closely matches up with the concern of everyone in the world post-WWII.Works CitedBaker, Russell. Preface. Animal Farm. By George Orwell. New York Signet Classic, v-xii. Print. Orwell, George. Animal Farm. New York Signet Classic, 1996. Print. The draw of History. FC130B The Communist Dictatorships of Lenin & Stalin (1920-39). Web. 04 Dec. 2012. . Woodhouse, C.M.. Introduction Animal Farm. By George Orwell. New York Signet Classic,1996. xiii-xxiii. Print.