Animal Farm

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"All animals are equal...but some animals are more equal than others."

A clever Beast Fable satirizing the evolving Russian communism by George Orwell, as well as a book with two adaptations you should never, ever show your children. They may start revolting.

Orwell tells, allegorically, how the Russian Revolution would go if its participants were animals, and if you reduced Russia to the area of a typical England country farm. When you get what the point of the book is -- being a satire of Communism written during World War II -- it's not hard to guess where the plot is going.

The inspiration for this book came about when Orwell saw a boy leading a cart horse, whipping it all the while. Orwell thought that if animals realized just how strong they are, they can defeat the human race and end up running the world.

In 1955, the British animation studio Halas & Batchelor produced an Animated Adaptation, which was widely heralded as a milestone of British animation , though it came under heavy criticism for its Lighter and Softer approach to Orwell's fable, including a Happy Ending in which the farm animals rise up against their new overlords. (It appears that the United States Central Intelligence Agency had a hand in providing funding for the film, though it seems uncertain whether the film's writers and directors were aware of the fact.)

It also inspired Pink Floyd's Concept Album Animals, though it criticizes capitalism instead of communism. Snowball's Chance also rips on both capitalism and Animal Farm itself, portraying Snowball returning and becoming a George W. Bush Expy.

A live action version, starring Patrick Stewart as the voice of Napoleon and Kelsey Grammer as Snowball, was produced in 1999. A stage adaptation, drawing heavily from another Orwell classic, Homage to Catalonia, was first produced in 2008.

Do not confuse with Animal House.

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Tropes in Animal Farm:

• Adaptation Expansion: The new endings of both film versions. Plus the focus shift to Jessie in the live action version, in place of Clover,who is absent.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: The pigs end up adopting human ways to the point where in the end, the other animals find it impossible to tell the pigs from the humans.
• Angry Guard Dog: Napoleon has nine of these
• Animal Talk
• Animated Adaptation
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: One of the original Seven Commandments forbade animals to kill animals, conveniently discarded when Napoleon became convinced there were potential or actual Pro-Snowball traitors in his midst.
• Badass Bookworm: Snowball.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty: In-universe -- Boxer's motto "Napoleon is always right" is actually derived from "If Comrade Napoleon says it, it must be right."
• Beast Fable
• Berserk Button: Don't send Benjamin's best friend Boxer to the knacker's. You'll regret it later on. Exclusive to the animated adaptation.
  • Happens again in the live action version, but instead of rebelling, a sizable number of the animals use this as justification for leaving the farm.
• Blatant Lies: Everything Squealer says.
  • "You don't want Jones to come back, do you?"
• Bolivian Army Ending: Exclusive to the animated adaptation. It's actually kind of...disturbing.
• Book Ends: In the animated film, the beginning and end both involve a revolution to overthrow a tyrant.
• Brilliant but Lazy: Benjamin (Deconstructed Trope).
• Can't Hold His Liquor: Squealer and Napoleon, when waking up the next morning after ending up completely plastered while rewriting the amendment that forbade alcohol to forbade drinking to excess (ironically) in the 1990s film, end up with an intense hangover with Napoleon and Squealer remarking that they're dying, showing the reason why animals shouldn't drink alcohol, and thus leading to the paranoia of Napoleon later on.
• Covers Always Lie: The cover for the 1999 film makes it look like a cute, Disneyesque movie for kids. Yeah, no.
• Chekhov's Army: The dogs.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Intentional, obviously.
• The Commandments: The Principles of Animalism.
• Crowd Chant: "Four legs good, two legs baaaaaad!"
  • And at the end of the book, it's "four legs good, two legs better!"
• Cyanide Pill: One gander confesses to working for snowball and eats some deadly nightshade berries, which are deadly to ganders, to kill himself
• Deadpan Snarker: Benjamin the donkey. When asked by the other animals whether or not he feels life has improved after the revolution, he says "Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey."
• Downer Ending: This book is a satirization of the Russian Revolution. Obviously, things do not go well.
  • The Bad Guy Wins
  • Doomed by Canon
  • Ironically, it's Soviet Russia's actual historical downfall that allowed the film's more upbeat ending, probably the only way to get away with it.
• Disneyfication: Both the animated adaptation and the live action adaptation changed the ending to be more uplifting. Ironically, the live action version was made after the Soviet Union collapsed, making it one of the more justified uses.
• Dumb Is Good: Oh, they wish.
• Dying Like Animals: Each particular type of animal is supposed to represent a particular "class" or group of people and their behavior in reaction to the revolution and the aftermath. The pigs, for instance, are the upper Party "aristocracy" (and no points for guessing who the sheep are supposed to be...).
• Face Heel Turn: Napoleon, as well as most of the other pigs.
  • It could be argued that Napoleon was never a good guy to begin with. He begins raising his army of dogs only a chapter after the revolution. This could indicate that he was planning to betray the revolution all along.
• Fat Bastard: Squealer, who grows impossibly fat near the end of the novel.
• Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better: Trope Namer
• Full-Circle Revolution: Most of the pigs stage one of the best known examples of the trope in western literature. It's the core theme of the novel.
• Fun with Acronyms: One of Orwell's suggested titles for its French translation was Union des républiques socialistes animales, which roughly acronyms as URSA -- Latin for "bear", the symbol of Russia.
• Glad I Thought of It: Napoleon appropriates Snowball's windmill idea after the latter's exile.
• Gullible Lemmings: Most animals, but specially sheep.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Most of the pigs.
• Humans Are Bastards: Fundamental to the book's premise. Not that the animals are much better.
  • In contrast with the humans, the animals are generally portrayed positively in the book. After the revolution, the animals all work together 'according to their capacity' and no animal steals 'so much as a mouthful'. Napoleon and the pigs who go along with him (after he exiles Snowball and does away with any form of democracy on the farm) are an exception, since they represent the emerging ruling class of Russia (which Orwell despised). Another exception is Mollie who represents the middle class.
• Humans Are Cthulhu: Subverted, but they kept the punching-out part.
• Hypocrite: The pigs but especially Napoleon who hoards sugar for himself, not even sharing it with the other pigs, because it will make them fat.
• It Gets Worse: Its even implied that Napoleon is going to start feuding with Mr. Pilkington because they are both cheating at cards
• Kangaroo Court: One after another, many animals "admit" to helping Snowball sabotage the farm and get immediately killed. (This being a reference to Stalin's purges and show trials of the late 1930s).
• Karma Houdini: One of the most egregious examples ever.
  • Not so much in the animated movie.
• Large Ham: Snowball and Squealer (fitting, because they're both pigs).
  • This makes sense, because they were based on Trotsky and Molotov, respectively, both of whom were grandiose
• Meaningful Name: Snowball (as in the snowball effect), Napoleon (as in the dictator), and Moses (as in the one talking about Sugarcane Mountain, a "promise land").
• Meet the New Boss
  • More specifically he seems to imply that fascism leads to tyranny (Mr. Frederick/Nazi Germany), liberal democratic capitalism leads to waste (Mr. Pilkington/Britain and the West), and none of the politicians on all sides cared about anyone but themselves.
  • The ending seems to imply that the pigs and humans are essentially the same, meaning metaphorically the Stalinism is essentially just another form of conservative capitalism, keeping down the working classes (or the other animals). Which explains why they had to change it for the movie, of course.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Mr. Frederick.
  • He blatantly resembles Hitler in the 1999 film. Ironically, he's even more sympathetic there than he was in the novel.
    • Snowball is also similar to Hitler.
    • Uh, NO, he's Leon Trotsky.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Napoleon was based on Joseph Stalin, Snowball on Leon Trotsky, while Old Major is based on both Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.
• Not So Different: More or less the moral; the final line of the book sees the animals look from their pig rulers to the humans they are meeting with and being no longer able to tell the difference.
• Orwellian Retcon: The real truth of the revolution keeps getting this treatment until no one really remembers the original facts except those smart enough to keep their mouth shut.
• Plagiarism in Fiction: Snowball comes up with the idea to build a windmill. Napoleon steals it. What's worse, he makes things seem as though Snowball was the one who stole the idea, and before having Snowball exiled, he expresses displeasure in the concept, at one point he even goes so far as to urinate on the plans.
• The Promised Land: Sugarcandy Mountain. Played on the cynical side that it doesn't exist, and it's told to only keep the animals in line.
• The Purge
• Pyrrhic Victory: The Battle of the Windmill is this but Napoleon covers up the losses.
• Really Gets Around: Implied that Napoleon fathered many of the new porkers in the farm. The other pigs were castrates.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Snowball and Napoleon, respectively, with Snowball's role as the red later taken up by Squealer
• Released to Elsewhere: The fate of Boxer, whom Napoleon betrays and sells to the knacker.
• Retirony: Boxer was injured when he was due for retirement. He then ends up "sent to the vet" (in actuality, he's being sent to the knackers)
• Shout-Out: "I will work harder," Boxer's motto, was found in the mouth of Jurgis Rudkus from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
• Sinister Minister: Moses, Farmer Jones' pet raven, who fled the farm when Jones was overthrown and returned years later to tell the animals about Sugarcandy Mountain. His position is kind of analogous to that of religion; his claims are officially denied by the pigs but they keep him around to keep the animals in line.
  • Keep in mind that this was very similar to how the Soviet Union usually dealt with religion. Actually, if anything, Animal Farm downplayed it. In the real life Soviet Union, while the case can be argued that the Soviet Union used the Russian Orthodox Church to keep their people in line even though they never actually believed it, the truth is that that was only if the religious people were actually lucky. Most of the time, the Soviets were attempting to eliminate religion outright, and even had the KGB try to investigate locations of churches, sometimes even tricking people to help them locate a church so they could arrest the occupants for practicing religion, and the penalty was either execution or being placed in a work camp.
  • Moses' reinvigorated status under the pigs' rule might have been inspired by the fact that after Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort.
• Sliding Scale of Animal Communication: The animals can talk to each other, but only the pigs seem able to talk to humans, and then again only after they take over the farm.
• Spell My Name with an "S": Is it Mollie or Molly? The book itself tends to use the first, while some other references (including us) use the second.
• Straw Hypocrite: The pigs.
  • Made especially ironic in the 1999 version, as when Squealer changes one of the laws from 'Animals shall not drink' to 'Animals shall not drink to excess', he's still in violation of the law, as he's completely wasted at the time he's adding the extra words.
    • This was implied in the novel as well, since the animals hear a loud crash and run out in time to see Squealer stumbling around near the barn with a ladder and pot of white paint, but they're too dumb to realize what he was doing.
• Talking Animal: By the end, the pigs. Walking, too.
• Talking to Himself: In the animated version, all the onscreen characters were voiced by Maurice Denham.
• Totalitarian Utilitarian: The pigs start out like this. As the story progresses, some pigs are lost, while others are corrupted by their power unless they was really Straw Hypocrites all along. By the end of the story, the remaining pigs have become what they once rebelled against.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Napoleon plays it deadly straight.
• Unusual Animal Alliance: At least at first.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: No one seems to think it's weird that animals are running a farm by themselves, something that would most likely draw large crowds in real life. People even think the animals will just starve to death by themselves.
• Verbal Tic: "Four legs good, two legs bad!" And later "Four legs good, two legs better!"
• Villain with Good Publicity: Napoleon in Chapter 8 of the novel (it was hard to come across an animal without hearing how Napoleon's way of running things has improved his/her life). Not so much in the film adaptations, though...
• What Could Have Been: Animal Farm was originally going to be a direct exposé on the various atrocities committed by Stalin and his regime in the Soviet Union. However, the British press at the time would not publish it because the British Parliament at the time needed Stalin's support during World War II against Nazi Germany. His making it an allegory with talking animals was the only way he could get his message across in such a way that didn't interfere with the war effort.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to the cat? (In the book she just stops appearing after the first few chapters, and later isn't mentioned in the list of animals who've died, whilst only Snowball and Molly are ever acknowledged to have left the farm. The animated adaptation doesn't even keep her around for the original revolution.)
  • It's mentioned that she didn't show up to the meeting where Napoleon killed a bunch of the animals, so she probably ran away into the wild. Cat owners will tell you, cats are smart.
    • In the animated adaptation, the cat is killed by the dogs when the chickens try to rebel against Napoleon's egg demands. From how the scene plays out, she is killed senselessly and pointlessly, either being mistaken in the dark for a chicken or killed just for fun when they have the opportunity. YMMV on its allegorical content.
• Willing Suspension of Disbelief: animals talking (and some even becoming literate) and running a farm, as the book's allegory would not work otherwise
• Working Class People Are Morons: Boxer, meant to represent the working class.
  • Dumb Is Good as a side-trope to that.
• World of Symbolism: The reason scientists aren't rushing to the farm to dissect the strangely superintelligent animals who can apparently run farms and make business deals with neighboring farms and factories is because the animals and their story represent Russia's communist revolution.
• Xenofiction
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Cited by Old Major as one of the worst of Man's evils against animals, that "the very instant that our usefulness is at an end, we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty." Napoleon eventually crosses the Moral Event Horizon when he ends up doing just this, namely by sending Boxer to the knacker's when he is injured and no longer able to work.
• Your Cheating Heart: In the 1990s adaptation of Animal Farm, Mr. Pilkington's wife apparently cheats on her husband with Farmer Jones.