George Orwell’s Animal Farm is eighty years old this month, yet it could have been written yesterday. A severe, witty satire on the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and Stalinism, it transcends its historical boundaries and reflects political and social realities, character types, and aspirations throughout recent history. Much of its power lies in the brilliant use of animals — the wily pigs, dogs grown ferocious, a wise old donkey, the faithful-unto-death, hard-working horses, the message-carrier pigeons, the silly sheep, the hens and ducks and all the other creatures, who succeed in running the farm themselves after chasing out their human masters and oppressors. A dream of freedom and equality is introduced by Old Major, an old and idealistic pig, at the beginning of the novel just before he dies. The rest of the novel explores the efforts to realise this dream and the gradual dissolution of the free world imagined. But the consciousness of that escapes the majority of the ‘worker’ animals who have become subservient to the pigs, partly because memory is weak and propaganda — lies that change facts and history — is strong.
The novel’s universal quality derives from its deep dive into human power structures, even those that are created out of an initial aspiration to equality. Napoleon, the ambitious and clever pig, who chases away Snowball, his pig co-leader who was earnestly trying to create a just, productive, happy and equal society, shows his aptitude for tyranny early in the novel. The chasing is done not by himself, but by fierce dogs he has secretly nurtured and who become his bodyguards. Snowball becomes the bogey, the scapegoat in all ills that befall the farm, and his role is gradually changed into that of a frightening enemy through cleverly disseminated propaganda. Language is corrupted by opacity, lies and the machinery of constant manipulation, and narratives that slowly alter history and corrupt and dull the memory of the animals.
The scenario is perhaps only too familiar today. The corruption through power, the reversal of promises, the false pretence to ideals that change slightly from day to day, the deliberate spread of misinformation, shrewd exploitation, the constant effort to wipe out older histories, the creation of bogeys have all entered contemporary life so deeply that much of it is internalised, accepted. Although power structures exist at all levels — in the home, in the workplace — it is the governments or ruling regimes of certain countries that most obviously exhibit these characteristics. Animal Farm analyses totalitarianism, which today might be known by a different name. It lays bare the self-interest that lies at the heart of power and authoritarianism. The novel is a reminder that in spite of recurring aspirations to equality, human beings get trapped in the inner workings of power. What is alarming about Animal Farm is
that there are no villains, just well-intentioned creatures who turn into tyrants and their slaves as they work towards their dream.