What is Animal Farm about?

Animal Farm (1945) is an allegory of the Russian Revolution. Animals on Manor Farm revolt against their human farmer, establish a democracy, and gradually watch it become an oligarchy as the pigs — particularly Napoleon — accumulate power. The final image: "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

What does each animal represent?

• Napoleon = Stalin
• Snowball = Trotsky (the idealist expelled)
• Old Major = Marx/Lenin (the ideological founder)
• The sheep = the masses who repeat slogans without understanding them
• Boxer = the loyal working class exploited by the revolution they supported
• Squealer = propaganda, the rewriting of history

What is the most important moment in Animal Farm?

The gradual revision of the Seven Commandments. "No animal shall kill any other animal" becomes "No animal shall kill any other animal without cause." "All animals are equal" becomes "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." The corruption of the revolution is documented in the corruption of its founding text — exactly how Stalin revised Marxist doctrine.

Why is "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" so powerful?

Because it captures how all political doublethink works: the form of the principle is maintained while its content is inverted. You cannot argue against it directly because it nominally upholds equality. The corruption is in the word "more" — which the sentence simultaneously asserts and makes meaningless.

What is Animal Farm's enduring lesson?

That revolutionary movements reliably reproduce the power structures they overthrow — especially when they succeed. The tools that justify rebellion can justify any subsequent authority. The question "who watches the watchmen?" has no institutional answer; it requires constant vigilance from the people the revolution claimed to serve.