Story elements
At a Glance:
Full Title: Animal Farm: A Fairy Story
Author: George Orwell (pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair)
Type Of Work: Novella
Genre: Dystopian animal fable; satire; allegory; political roman à clef (French for “novel
with a key”—a thinly veiled exposé of factual persons or events)
Language: English
Time And Place Written: 1943–1944, in London
Date Of First Publication: 1946
Publisher: Harcourt Brace & Company
In-depth Facts:
Narrator: Animal Farm is the only work by Orwell in which the author does not appear
conspicuously as a narrator or major character; it is the least overtly personal of all of
his writings. The anonymous narrator of the story is almost a nonentity, notable for no
individual idiosyncrasies or biases.
Point Of View: The story is told from the point of view of the common animals of
Animal Farm, though it refers to them in the third person plural as “they.”
Tone: For the most part, the tone of the novel is objective, stating external facts and
rarely digressing into philosophical meditations. The mixture of this tone with the
outrageous trajectory of the plot, however, steeps the story in an ever-mounting irony.
Tense: Past
Setting (Time): As is the case with most fables, Animal Farm is set in an unspecified
time period and is largely free from historical references that would allow the reader
to date the action precisely. It is fair to assume, however, that Orwell means the fable
to be contemporaneous with the object of its satire, the Russian Revolution (1917–
1945). It is important to remember that this period represented the recent past and
present at the time of writing and that Orwell understands the significance of the
story’s action to be immediate and ongoing rather than historical.
Setting (Place): An imaginary farm in England
Protagonist: There is no clear central character in the novel, but Napoleon, the
dictatorial pig, is the figure who drives and ties together most of the action.
Major Conflict: There are a number of conflicts in Animal Farm—the animals versus
Mr. Jones, Snowball versus Napoleon, the common animals versus the pigs, Animal
Farm versus the neighbouring humans—but all of them are expressions of the
underlying tension between the exploited and exploiting classes and between the lofty
ideals and harsh realities of socialism.
Rising Action: The animals throw off their human oppressors and establish a socialist
state called Animal Farm; the pigs, being the most intelligent animals in the group, take
control of the planning and government of the farm; Snowball and Napoleon engage in
ideological disputes and compete for power.
Climax: In Chapter V, Napoleon runs Snowball off the farm with his trained pack of
dogs and declares that the power to make decisions for the farm will be exercised
solely by the pigs.
Falling Action: Squealer emerges to justify Napoleon’s actions with skilful but
duplicitous reinterpretations of Animalist principles; Napoleon continues to
consolidate his power, eliminating his enemies and reinforcing his status as supreme
leader; the common animals continue to obey the pigs, hoping for a better future.
Themes: The corruption of socialist ideals in the Soviet Union; the societal tendency
toward class stratification; the danger of a naïve working class; the abuse of language
as instrumental to the abuse of power
Motifs: Songs; state ritual
Symbols: Animal Farm; the barn; the windmill
Foreshadowing: The pigs’ eventual abuse of power is foreshadowed at several points
in the novel. At the end of Chapter II, immediately after the establishment of the
supposedly egalitarian Animal Farm, the extra milk taken from the cows disappears,
and the text implies that Napoleon has drunk it himself. Similarly, the dogs’ attack on
Boxer during Napoleon’s purges, in Chapter VII, foreshadows the pigs’ eventual
betrayal of the loyal cart-horse.
