Animal Farm vs. Marxism
In George Orwell's Animal Farm, the animals and events can be compared to similar people and events during the Russian Revolution of 1917. These similarities stand out due to the symbolism found in the book and the reality of the happenings of the Russian Revolution. Old Major was a prized-boar that belonged to Farmer Jones. The fact that Old Major is himself a boar was to signify that radical change and revolution are, themselves, boring in the eyes of the lower class (represented by the other barnyard animals), who are more prone to worrying about work and survival in their everyday life. Old Major gave many speeches to the farm animals about hope and the future. He is the main animal who got the rebellion started even though he died before it actually began. Old Major's role compares to Lenin and Marx whose ideas were to lead to the communist revolution. "Animal Farm is a criticism of Karl Marx, as well as a novel perpetuating his convictions of democratic Socialism." (Zwerdling, 20). Lenin became leader and teacher of the working class in Russia, and their determination to struggle against capitalism. Like Old Major, Lenin and Marx wrote essays and gave speeches to the working class poor. T
"Stalin had his secret police kill between 60,000 to 70,000 people. None of the social classes were fighting each other because there were no classes left. Another character represented in the book is Farmer Jones. The last characters that are symbolic of each other are the animal Snowball with the Russian leader Trotsky. This actually backfired in Russia and the war continued and the people still starved. The Czar made his working class people very mad with the way he wielded his authority and preached all the time, and the people suffered and finally demanded reform by rebelling. The windmill that is present in Animal Farm can be compared with the growth of industry in Russia or the Industrial Revolution. In Russia, there were many food shortages, which caused the people to demonstrate, and then the Russian soldiers refused to suppress them and the leaders demanded that Nicholas transfer his power to parliamentary government because everything was getting out of control. The withholding of this food is what finally forced the animals on the farm to rebel against Farmer Jones. What Russia got working was to make the people think that the prospect of loss of potential improvements in conditions of life of the here and now, could only be attained by stimulating labor to unprecedented efforts. Stalin used his power to starve the Russian people and to have Lenin arrested. Farmer Jones was drunk a lot and would forget to feed the animals on the farm. "Russia hoped that! by keeping the serfs working all the time and promising them a better world that they would not realize how bad their living conditions were. Napoleon thought that if he could keep the barnyard animals busy all the time replacing the windmill that they would not realize how bad their living conditions were, and he could blame the destruction all the time on Snowball. He was at one time considered the second most powerful man in Russia.
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Acceptance Essays
