Book Report
03AUGUST2014
Animal Farm is at first glance a fable with a goofy plot and fun animal characters but once you look deeper it shows itself as a satire on Soviet Communism. It was written by George Orwell in 1945 at the end of World War II. I chose this book as my favorite because even though I was forced to read it in school I thoroughly enjoyed it. I enjoyed reading it as an easier way to understand the way Communism was working in Russia and how Stalin abused his power rather than just listening to a history lesson. This book is a great representation of how sometimes people can get put into a power position whether by force or by default, even if they dont deserve it, and even if at first they had ideas of helping they end up getting drunk with all the power and completely abusing it. There are a few main characters in the book that stand out amongst the rest. There is Napoleon who is the main antagonist of the book essentially portraying Joseph Stalin. Then there is Snowball who is supposed to be a representation of Leon Trotsky. Old Major was the prize-winning boar representing Vladimir Lenin and Boxer who is a cart horse that is harworking but slightly slow-witted and shows the working class that just trusted anyone in leadership and followed anything anyone said. Napoleon starts out wanting to simply rebel against the humans so that the animals can run themselves. Or at least that's what he makes everyone think. In actuality he wants all of the power for himself. He ends up secretly raising dogs to be killers and uses them as his own little enforcers to makes everyone else do what he wants them to do out of fear of being killed by the dogs. Napoleon quickly becomes a dictator and runs the farm as a despotism making rules for everyone else to follow even though he does not follow them himself. He then threatens them or kills them if they try and talk against him. It is very similar to how some people nowadays get put into a position where they are in charge and they act like they are above everyone else no matter how much everyone knows they are not. They gain this false sense of power and will not listen to anyone because they get in their minds that they can't be wrong which eventually makes every single person they are in charge of lose all respect for them and in the end is what causes the idea that leaders are all terrible. Like Napoleon using brute force to force all the animals on the farm to do everything he wants them to some leaders use threats or punishments making the guys they are commanding end up hating and having absolutely no respect for them. That is exactly what happened with Joseph Stalin which ended up giving the Soviet Union such a bad reputation. He would put anyone who spoke against him to death even if they simply spoke their minds against Communism. He also exiled Trotsky because they had