Animal Farm: 75th Anniversary Edition (Anniversary)

The Fable That Outlived Its Target

George Orwell wrote Animal Farm in 1944, during the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union, when criticizing Stalin was considered bad form in London publishing circles. Four publishers rejected it. When it finally appeared in August 1945, it became one of the most widely read political satires in the English language.

What the Book Does

The setup is deceptively simple. The animals of Manor Farm overthrow their drunken human owner and establish a republic based on seven commandments, the most important being "All animals are equal." The pigs, being the cleverest, take charge of organizing. Slowly, the commandments get revised. Rations get redistributed. Dissenters get silenced. By the end, the pigs are walking on two legs, wearing clothes, and drinking with the neighboring farmers.

Orwell maps the entire arc of the Russian Revolution onto a barnyard: Old Major is Marx, Napoleon is Stalin, Snowball is Trotsky, Boxer is the loyal proletariat who works himself to death. But the book outlasted the Soviet Union because the pattern it describes is not exclusively Russian. Any revolution that hands total power to a vanguard class will produce the same ending. The commandments will always be rewritten.

About This Edition

Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Signet / Penguin
Format: Mass Market Paperbound
ISBN: 9780451526342
Edition: 75th Anniversary