Animal Farm: Allegory and the Art of Persuasion

At the time when Animal Farm was published in the 1940s the rule of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and events in Ukraine and Georgia, as well as other places throughout Eastern Europe, would have been familiar to the average reader. This background knowledge will help to make the allegorical structure of Orwell’s novella clear to students. This lesson plan can be adapted to expand on history and social studies lessons which focus on this time period.

Allegory can be found both in literature and in the visual arts, such as painting and sculpture. Like metaphors, allegories utilize one subject as if it were analogous to another, seemingly unrelated, subject. Unlike metaphors, the representational image is more detailed and is sustained throughout the length of a story, novel, or poem. Allegories are generally understood as rhetorical, and, as a form of rhetoric, are generally designed to persuade their audience. More information about allegories and rhetoric is accessible through EDSITEment's Literary Glossary.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.

In this lesson students will focus on George Orwell’s Animal Farm as an example of this rhetorical device, as it is perhaps the most widely read allegory in the middle school and high school classrooms. Orwell’s 1945 novella is an allegorical indictment of tyranny which utilizes the historical events and players of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent rise of Stalin as a cautionary tale. This lesson can be taught in conjunction with a close reading of the text, or it can be used to introduce the concept of allegory. Other well known allegorical texts include Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies, and John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.

• Review and bookmark the web pages containing definitions for allegory and rhetoric, as well as the text of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. 
• A complete audiobook is available.
• The 1954 cartoon film of Animal Farm (70 minutes) is available. 

Activity 1. Animal Farm and Allegory

George Orwell’s 1945 novella, Animal Farm, is the story of an animal revolution. The animal residents of Manor Farm, spurred on by the dream of the pig, Old Major, decide they will change their “miserable, laborious, and short” lives. They overthrow Mr. Jones, their master, and take over the management of the farm. Rather than living under the heel of their human master, the animals of Manor Farm decide that they will take control of the products of their labor, working for the good of the farm and other animals, rather than for the good of humans.

How is this story allegorical? You may provide your own definition of allegory, or you can ask your students to read the definition of allegory that is available through EDSITEment's Literary Glossary. If an allegory is “an extended metaphor in which characters and objects hold both a literal meaning as well as a secondary, implied meaning,” then what is the additional or alternative meaning contained in Orwell’s story of animal rebellion?

Activity 2. The Collective Farm and the Communist State

Many of the events at Manor Farm are closely linked to political events in Russia during the first half of the twentieth century. The rebellion by the working animals of the farm against the oppressive human farmer who lives off the fruits of their labor is directly analogous to the Russian Revolution of 1917 in which workers and peasants revolted against a feudal system in which feudal lords lived luxuriously from the toil of the peasants who farmed on their lands. If your students are not already familiar with some of the main events of Russian history from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of World War II, you may wish to have them read an overview of the history of the Soviet Union.

Ask students to answer the following questions about the events that take place on the Manor Farm, and how they are an allegorical retelling of the events from the Russian Revolution to the end of World War II in Russia.

• How is Orwell’s Animal Farm an allegorical retelling of the end of feudalism and the rise and consolidation of communism in Russia?
• How does Orwell parallel Czarist Russia and the life of the Russian peasants in the characters and events of Animal Farm?
• What internal feud within the Communist party is paralleled in the struggle for power between Napoleon and Snowball?
• During the Stalinist period the Communist State repeatedly set industrial and agricultural production goals that were often difficult or impossible to reach. These goals played a major role in the government’s Five Year Plan and similar plans. How are these plans represented in Orwell’s novella?

Activity 3. What's in a Name?

Many of the characters in Animal Farm are clearly meant to represent historical figures. The human inspiration for Orwell’s fictional characters can often be found in the characters’ parallel actions, and sometimes even in their names. As an important structural component of the novella as an allegorical tale, each of the characters in the story is representative of players in the historical narrative the story represents.

After discussing with the class the trajectory of the Russian revolution and subsequent Communist Party fracturing, ask students to work in pairs on the characters of Animal Farm. If students are less familiar with the historical context, or if this lesson is not being taught in conjunction with a close reading of the Orwell text, you may prefer to work on completing this chart together as a class. 

Once students have filled out their charts ask them to think about the names of each of the characters. What importance and symbolism is contained in Orwell’s choice of names? Draw their attention to Napoleon and Boxer in particular.

Finally, ask students to answer the following questions:

• What is the metaphor at the heart of Orwell’s allegorical tale?
• How do the characters support the larger allegory of the story?
• How is Orwell’s choice of animal and name for each character important in contributing to the larger story?

Activity 4. Tyranny by any other Name...

Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984, are often cited as works that are designed to show the weaknesses of Communism. These works took aim at the Soviet Union, however Orwell’s larger target was tyranny, in whatever form it appeared. He was as much concerned with the repression of rights and the injustice of the economic system in his own England as he was about Stalinist Russia.

As an allegorical tale about the dangers of tyranny, Orwell’s Animal Farm uses the story of Napoleon, Snowball, and Boxer as a form of rhetoric. Rhetoric can be understood as the use of language to persuade an audience of a belief or point of view. In the case of Animal Farm, Orwell is using the story of Manor Farm’s animal rebellion to caution people against the encroachment of tyranny. More information on rhetoric can be found in EDSITEment's Literary Glossary.

Ask students to contemplate the use of rhetoric in Animal Farm using the recommended questions: 

• How is this allegorical tale also a rhetorical tale?
• What is Orwell trying to persuade the audience to see or understand?
• What is Orwell cautioning his audience against?
• How does the story of Boxer act as a persuasive argument against tyranny?
• What are the lessons to be learned from Napoleon’s behavior?
• What is the warning contained in the changes to the list of commandments?
• What is the lesson contained in the final, single commandment: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others?

Ask students to gather together their answers to the questions posed throughout this lesson, which they should then use as the basis for writing a short essay answer the following questions:

• How is Orwell’s Animal Farm an allegory, and what is in an allegory?
• What are the rhetorical components of this allegory?
• How is the use of allegory as a rhetorical device different from simply laying out a non-fictional account, or an historical or statistical analysis of the period and the rise of the Communist Party?
• How is Orwell’s use of allegory rhetorically successful?

Martin Niemoller was a church pastor in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power. He shifted from an early support of Hitler to being very outspoken against the Nazi agenda and practices. He was arrested and held in concentration camps throughout World War II, and barely escaped execution. He is now perhaps best known for his cautionary poem:

In Germany they came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Ask students to compare Niemoller’s cautionary poem with Orwell’s allegorical story of the Manor Farm. How are their messages similar or different? How is the method of delivering those message similar or different?