Animal Farm (Unabridged)

Animal Farm is an allegorical satire of the events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917, and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Orwell described the book as a satirical tale against Stalin and went on to say that it was the first book in which he tried “to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole”. All of the leading figures involved in this period are parodied as various animals. The main ones are as follows:

Old Major – an old boar; an allegorical combination of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin

Napoleon – a large Berkshire boar who represents Joseph Stalin

Snowball – a pig who represents Leon Trotsky, though with some traits of Lenin

Squealer – another pig who represents the propagandist, Molotov

Mr. Jones – Tsar Nicholas II

Frederick – Adolf Hitler