Animal Farm

By George Orwell

In this story, the major problem being faced is the dictatorship of Mr. Jones, a farmer. Most of the animals on his farm didn't have a problem with his

poor treatment of them. However, the pigs on the farm were fed up with his tyranny and were ready for rebellion. The leader of the pigs, who they called Major, called the rest of the animals together for a meeting one fall night. He told them of a dream he had the previous night. It was a glorious dream of rebellion. Even though he didn't know when this political takeover would occur, he knew it would happen. Three days later, old Major died peacefully in his sleep.

A couple of months had passed and the farm wasn't running in very good condition when one of the cows broke out of the barn. This triggered the other animals to help themselves from their stalls. In the process, they made such a racket that Mr. Jones came down to see what the problem was. Jones and his farmhands suddenly found themselves being butted and kicked and they were chased all the way to the road.

The pigs "naturally" took on the leadership role and started a new government. They defined their principles as "animalism". They made up seven commandments which spelled out in words the rights of the animals and the laws of the society. The most important of these commandments was number seven, which stated that "All animals are equal."The first leader of the animals was Snowball, a white pig. He formed various animal committees to benefit the other members of the farms such as: the Egg Production Committee for the hens, the Clean Tails League for the cows, the Wild Comrades Re-education Committee (the object of this was to tame the various rodents of the farm) and the Whiter Wool Movement for the sheep.

Napoleon, who is the second pig in command, had slowly been gaining more power over Snowball until the white pig was mysteriously expelled from the farm. After this change in power, the Animalism had changed into "Napoleonism". Since most of the animals on the farm were too simple minded to even notice, Napoleon got away with slowly eroding all of the rights they had been given through the seven commandments. These seven commandments were replaced by one sentence: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.

The end result is this: Even though the animals on the farm overthrew the dictatorship of Mr. Jones, a whole new tyranny was created by the pigs. Since the book ended before anything was resolved, there was no real solution.

The complexity of the problem made the book very thought provoking and somewhat humorous to read. Also, the problem unfolds very evenly and slowly so that it flows better and sortof sneaks up on you.