English — Animal Farm Background (3/3): Reading the Fable

Animal Farm Background — Part 3 of 3. A short English-language reading key for high school students working through Orwell’s Animal Farm. No plot spoilers.

This is the episode that gives you the historical key to the fable. We don’t tell you the story — we tell you who each animal really stands for, so that when you turn the page, every scene becomes a mirror of the early twentieth century. After Episodes 1 and 2 (Orwell’s life and Stalinism), this final part walks through the cast: Mr Jones is the last Tsar, Old Major is Marx and Lenin in one pig, Snowball is Trotsky, Napoleon is Stalin, Squealer is the propaganda machine, the dogs are the secret police, Mr Frederick is Hitler. We name the historical events the book quietly mirrors — including the Hitler–Stalin Pact of 1939 and Operation Barbarossa in 1941 — without spoiling the scenes that show them. Bring this key with you when you read.

You’ll hear who each character represents:

• Mr Jones — Tsar Nicholas II
• Old Major — Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin (one pig, two real men)
• Snowball — Leon Trotsky
• Napoleon — Joseph Stalin
• Squealer — Soviet propaganda / the newspaper Pravda
• The dogs — the NKVD secret police
• The sheep — the manipulated masses
• Boxer and Clover — the idealistic Soviet workers
• Mollie — the aristocrats who fled abroad
• Benjamin the donkey — the cynical intellectual (possibly Orwell himself)
• Moses the raven — the Russian Orthodox Church
• Mr Pilkington — Britain and the Western powers
• Mr Frederick — Hitler and Nazi Germany

Plus the setting: Manor Farm = Tsarist Russia, Animal Farm = the Soviet Union, the Rebellion = the October Revolution of 1917, and the Seven Commandments = the original ideals of the revolution. (Watch what happens to them as you read — we won’t spoil it.)

Level: B2 English. Length: ~6 minutes.

This is the third and final episode of the Animal Farm Background series.