1. An Introduction to Animal Farm
Fables and Allegories
An Introduction to Animal Farm

2. What do you know? What do you know or remember about fables?
Have you ever heard of an allegory before?
What is satire?

3. The Ant and the Grasshopper: a Fable

4. Aesop
Probably the most well known writer of fables is Aesop, who lived in Ancient Greece.
He wrote “The Ant and the Grasshopper ” and lots of other fables still popular today.

5. Quotations from Aesop Don’t cry over spilt milk.
Don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched.
Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Appearances are often deceiving.
Birds of a feather flock together.
Slow and steady wins the race.

6. Fable Fables are very short
Fables feature nonhuman characters who have been personified to an extreme
such as animals, plants, inanimate objects, mythical creatures, or forces of nature who think, talk, act, fight, disobey, and obey
Fables end with a short moral lesson

7. “The Ant and the Grasshopper” is a Fable!
It is very short
The animal characters talk, sing, think, plan, and feel
It teaches a moral or lesson: it is best to prepare for days of need.

8. Allegory
Allegories are forms of extended metaphors, which continue throughout the whole text
An allegory is a piece of “art”work in which every part has at least two meanings:
the literal meaning
and an abstract or symbolic meaning
The underlying meaning of an allegory has social, religious, or political significance

9. The “Ant and the Grasshopper” is an Allegory, too!
Literal Meaning Symbolic Meaning
The Ant
Corn
The Grasshopper
Summer
Winter
= Hardworking People
= Work / Preparation
= Short-sighted People
= Opportunity Time
= Hard Times

10. Satire
Ridicules people, practices, governments, or institutions in order to reveal their weaknesses and provoke improvement
Uses wit, ridicule, irony, sarcasm, parody, reversal, and hyperbole
Reader must be careful to pay attention to hints and clues of the reality of the situation beyond the façade of a seemingly innocent story

11. Animal Farm is all 3: a fable, an allegory, and satire!

12. Animal Farm as a Fable:
Has animals: sheep, horses, cows, pigs, chickens, ravens, dogs, donkeys, ducks
Teaches many lessons:
A perfect society is only as perfect as the members that make it up.
No society will ever have real equality as long as some people take advantage of others.
Don’t always believe what you hear and see.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

13. Animal Farm as an Allegory:
Literal = Symbolic
Manor Farm = Russia
Animals Revolution = Russian Revolution
Animalism = Communism
Old Major = Karl Marx
Napoleon = Joseph Stalin
Snowball = Leo Trotsky
Squealer = Russian Propaganda and Media
Pigs = Communists
Horses = Workers
Windmill = Stalin’s 5 year improvement plan
Dogs = KGB or police

14. Animal Farm as Satire:
It ridicules society and those who try to make society better through the implementation of ideas
It ridicules Joseph Stalin’s reign of power
It parodies with wit Stalin and his government as evil pigs (literally and figuratively)
It shows reversal in that people can be animals in the way that they treat, exploit, and manipulate each other for their own gain
It exaggerates how a lack of literacy, reading, and education makes people easy targets for tyrants, dictators, and those who would use propaganda to manipulate the masses
It shows how rhetoric, the art of persuasive writing and speaking, and propaganda are more important to maintaining power than goodness, competence, fairness, and other virtues