Background Info or What means What (Things you need to know for Animal Farm)

Key People/Events Russian Revolution – When the peasants/working class of Russia decided to revolt against the aristocracy in Also called the Bolshevik Revolution Marx and Lenin  Started the Revolution.  Wanted all men to be equal and all men to contribute their fair share to society.  No more “Ruling Class” just by virtue of one’s birth or place in society.  Dreamed of a society where all men work together and SHARE in the profits…

Czar Nicholas  The leader of pre-Revolutionary Russia  controlling force that would take from the peasants without fair compensation  By virtue of his birth, he was the leader  Killed in the Revolution

Josef Stalin  Began his rise to power with good intentions  eventually became corrupted by greed and his quest for power  Became a dictator who eventually slaughtered millions of Russian peasants

Trotsky  Supported Lenin and Marx’s ideas and worked to start the Revolution  sent into exile by Stalin and murdered in Mexico

“Proletariat”  The working class of Russia who is ill-informed and uneducated  believe wholeheartedly in their leaders  won’t accept the fact that they are being used by their government

Pravda  The propaganda tool of the Communist Party.  Controlled by whom? KGB  Very scary group  deeply feared by the people of Russia.

ALLEGORY 0 An extended metaphor in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative are equated with meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. 0 Thus an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.

IRONY Irony is when the opposite of what is expected to happen occurs. Three kinds of irony: 1. verbal irony is when an author says one thing and means something else. 2. dramatic irony is when an audience perceives something that a character in the literature does not know. 3. situational irony is a discrepancy between the expected result and actual results.

SATIRE 0 A literary tone used to ridicule or make fun of human vice or weakness, often with the intent of correcting, or changing, the subject of the satiric attack.

FABLE 0 Giving human speech and manners to animals and inanimate things. Fables often conclude with a moral, delivered in the form of a sentence to summarize the lesson.

PROPAGANDA 0 information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.