Animal Farm: Final Thoughts

Through the progression of George Orwell's classic novella Animal Farm, readers take the journey with a group of animals who are sick of how they are being treated at the hands of the man to a utopian, dream society to an oppressive, authoritarian dictatorship that brought them virtually right back to where they started. Through this journey, however, the animals slowly lose sense of themselves. Although their rebellion is successful, the lone pig Napoleon slowly takes control and begins to restrict the freedoms and rations of the animals, as well as changing the Seven Animal Commandments that Animal Farm was founded on. At times, these changes were blatant; the animals, however, in their strong, and blind want to believe that their lives were better without the humans, blinded themselves to the facts in front of them. Napoleon succeeded in painting heroes as traitors, forging statistics, and virtually changing the history of the farm because he took advantage of this fact. His political deceit and corruption virtually made the animals slaves to him - he used the toils of the hard work of the masses so that he and his close circle of friends and allies would be able to live in comfort, while the rest of the animals received fewer and fewer rations, eventually eating less than they did under Mr. Jones. Unfortunately, the response to this oppression of their individuality was simply nothing. The animals only looked on as Napoleon slowly became the one thing they thought the removed from their lives: Man.