Allegory & Symbolism
Allegory: The Layer Beneath the Story
Every element of Animal Farm operates on two levels: the surface narrative (animals on a farm) and the allegorical meaning (the Russian Revolution and Soviet Union). For the Edexcel exam, you need to move fluently between these two levels. When you discuss a character’s actions, connect them to their historical counterpart. When you discuss an event, explain what real-world event it represents and what Orwell is saying about it.
The key character mappings are: Old Major = Marx/Lenin, Napoleon = Stalin, Snowball = Trotsky, Squealer = Pravda (Soviet propaganda), Boxer = the loyal proletariat, Benjamin = cynical intellectuals, Mollie = the bourgeoisie, Moses = the Russian Orthodox Church, the dogs = secret police (NKVD), the sheep = citizens who repeat propaganda, Mr Jones = Tsar Nicholas II, Frederick = Hitler, Pilkington = the Western capitalist powers (Britain/USA).
The Windmill: Promise and Exploitation
The windmill is one of the novella’s central symbols. Snowball designs it as a project that will bring electricity, reduce working hours and improve the animals’ quality of life. After Snowball’s expulsion, Napoleon claims the idea as his own. The windmill represents Stalin’s Five-Year Plans — ambitious industrialisation programmes that promised to modernise the Soviet Union but were built on the brutal exploitation of workers.
The windmill is built, destroyed in a storm, rebuilt, destroyed by Frederick’s dynamite, and rebuilt again. Each cycle costs the animals more suffering while delivering less benefit. Orwell uses this repetition to show that the promise of a better future is the tool used to justify present suffering — and that the better future never actually arrives for ordinary citizens.
After the Rebellion, the animals agree that the farmhouse should be “preserved as a museum” — a symbol of the old regime that no animal should inhabit. But gradually, the pigs move in. They sleep in beds, eat from the best china, and eventually host dinner parties with humans. The farmhouse symbolises the Kremlin — once a symbol of revolutionary change, it becomes the private residence of a new elite. The distance between the farmhouse and the barn represents the growing gap between the rulers and the ruled.
The Seven Commandments: A Constitution Betrayed
The Seven Commandments function as Animal Farm’s constitution — the founding principles of the revolution. Their gradual alteration is Orwell’s most effective motif. Each change adds a qualifying clause that legalises the pigs’ behaviour: “with sheets”, “to excess”, “without cause.” The final reduction to “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” replaces seven principles with one self-contradicting statement. This mirrors the Soviet constitution of 1936, which guaranteed freedoms (speech, press, assembly) that were systematically violated during the purges happening at the same time.
Orwell shows that controlling language means controlling reality. If the commandments say the pigs can sleep in beds, then sleeping in beds is no longer a betrayal of the revolution. This connects to Orwell’s lifelong concern about political language, which he explored further in his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ (1946) and in the concept of Newspeak in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
Sugarcandy Mountain: The Opium of the People
Moses the raven tells the animals about Sugarcandy Mountain — a paradise where animals go after death, where “it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges.” This represents religion, specifically the Russian Orthodox Church. Karl Marx famously called religion “the opium of the people” — a drug that numbs the working class to their suffering by promising rewards in the afterlife.
Moses flies off after Mrs Jones on the day of the Rebellion, and the pigs tell the animals his stories are lies. Years later he comes back on his own, and Napoleon lets him stay and gives him a daily ration of beer. This parallels Stalin’s shifting relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church. Initially, the Bolsheviks persecuted the Church, but during World War II, Stalin rehabilitated it to boost morale and national unity. Orwell shows that totalitarian regimes will co-opt any institution — including religion — if it helps maintain control.
‘Beasts of England’: A Symbol of Lost Hope
The song ‘Beasts of England’ functions as a powerful symbol that tracks the trajectory of the revolution. Taught by Old Major, it represents the utopian dream of freedom and equality — an anthem that unites all the animals in shared hope. Its banning by Napoleon once he consolidates power is deeply significant: the dictator needs to erase the original vision of the revolution because it would expose how far the new reality has fallen from the original promise. Minimus’s replacement song praises the farm, but his later poem ‘Comrade Napoleon’ mirrors Stalin’s cult of personality, where art, music and literature were co-opted to glorify the leader rather than the collective ideals of socialism.
The Neighbouring Farms: The Cold War
Foxwood, owned by the easy-going Mr Pilkington, represents Britain and the Western democracies. Pinchfield, owned by the cunning, hard-driving Frederick, represents Nazi Germany. The shifting alliances between the farms mirror the complex diplomacy of the 1930s and 1940s — including the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 (when Frederick and Napoleon briefly trade) and the subsequent German invasion (the Battle of the Windmill). The final scene, where Napoleon plays cards with Pilkington, represents the Tehran and Yalta conferences where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt divided up post-war Europe.