As we’ve seen, semiotics has paid more and more attention to cultural issues and power relations, in some cases takes up Marxist critique. Animal Farm is a classic fictional take on this subject, focusing on a group of farm animals who are seriously fed up with how they’re being treated by human beings and, consequently, overthrow the owner of their farm.
At first it’s all good, but they soon come to realize that their new life of “equality” is anything but. The pigs, in particular, get really sly and bossy (who would’ve thought there was more than rolling in mud puddles?). But it’s to the extent that, by the novel’s ending, we can’t tell the difference between the pigs and the humans anymore.
Okay, so technically we could read this as a tale about talking animals, but if we scratch the surface, we find a political fable that’s all about human power relations and class conflict. So, not exactly Babe then…
Why do you think Orwell might have chosen to explore this theme through the use of allegory? Why didn’t he just write about human dictatorship?
The farm is led by a pig, Napoleon, accompanied by a simpering sidekick called Squealer. What do you imagine that these characters would be like as humans?