Fiducia TogetherAnimal Farm
Orwell's 1945 allegory of the Russian Revolution, told as a story about farm animals.
Please note: This page explains a word or a process in education. It is general information about the system, the law and the guidance in England — not advice about your child, your school or your exam. If a decision is going against you, get advice from one of the free services we link to before you agree to anything or miss a deadline. If you are revising, check your own exam board's specification: boards word things differently and yours is the one that marks you.
What it is
A short novel in which farm animals overthrow their farmer and build their own society, which is gradually taken over by the pigs until it is indistinguishable from what it replaced.
Set on some specifications as a modern prose text.
Where it applies
English Literature, and it also appears in Key Stage 3 and on some language papers as a source.
How it works
It is an allegory: each element maps to something in Soviet history — Old Major to Marx and Lenin, Napoleon to Stalin, Snowball to Trotsky, the dogs to the secret police, Boxer to the exploited worker.
The mechanism Orwell is really writing about is language. The Seven Commandments are edited one word at a time, and the whole betrayal happens through amendments nobody can quite remember being made.
Orwell was a socialist writing against Stalinism, not against socialism — a distinction that changes the reading and that students frequently get backwards.
How to use it in your work
Do not just decode the allegory. Mapping characters to historical figures is the starting point, not the essay. What does the allegory let Orwell say that a history could not?
Track the Commandments as a motif — the revisions are the plot in miniature.
Squealer and the manipulation of language are the most transferable points and connect to work you may have done on rhetoric and propaganda.
Where to get help
Your teacher, first — set texts vary by board and by school, and yours is the one that counts. Your board's past papers and examiners' reports are free online and say plainly what separates the bands.
Revise this with a song
These are ours. We write revision songs because a lot of people remember a tune when they cannot remember a page, and because revising out loud in the kitchen beats staring at a highlighter.
- Animal Farm The plot, characters and allegory of Animal Farm.
Where to read more
Last reviewed 2026-08-28 by Fiducia Together · Next review due 2027-08-28
Please note: This page explains a word or a process in education. It is general information about the system, the law and the guidance in England — not advice about your child, your school or your exam. If a decision is going against you, get advice from one of the free services we link to before you agree to anything or miss a deadline. If you are revising, check your own exam board's specification: boards word things differently and yours is the one that marks you.