What can be stated to be the PG-13 version of Orwell’s 1984 has actually stood on its own grounds through the years.

This is because George Orwell used something so fundamentally known and so naively understood to create what feels like a Disney-censored-animal-world-fantasy-kids-story. Oh, but how he used simply that, to create something so undeniably deep, and unsettlingly, is truly what makes a ‘George Orwell piece’, a ‘George Orwell piece.’

I think what Orwell mainly tried to tackle in this novella is the failure of a revolution.

The major plot revolves around the animals on a farm owned by humans. The animals threw over the authority of the human owners when they’d gotten sick and tired of their lazy and cruel manners. What commences there forth is the start of something so epic, so fragile, and so tragic.

The animals form a leadership amongst themselves. They form their own constitution (or a set of commandments on the barn wall). The gradual shift in the mannerisms of the leadership and the gradual substitutions made in the lines of the commandments become a pointer for the reader for how badly this revolution is turning out.

The smartest amongst them, the pigs, take up leadership roles, but of course, in every position of power, the throne can never be loyal to two contenders. So the softer-toned and progressive-minded Snowball is barbarically thrown out of the establishment by the brute force hired by Napoleon. The dictatorial government imposed by Napoleon thereafter made the living conditions for the animals much worse than they were originally for the animals under the control of humans.

As the story takes its darkest turns, the living conditions are made more deplorable, the truth is left hollower, and the sense of right or wrong fades until it can no longer be understood. The revolution started by the animals, has led to their very own demise.

Now, the critique of this brilliant and classic piece of literature has drawn a lot of parallels with movements and people in our very own history. I will say that a lot of these parallels are well placed as they are taken from around Orwell’s time, so he might’ve written this by being inspired by them.

There is the ideological founder of a revolution who dies before seeing what his ideas become. This is ‘Old Major’ in the storyline, and people have drawn his parallel to Karl Marx and other ideological leaders

There is the main antagonist, Napoleon, who has been compared to Joseph Stalin, a power-hungry, manipulative dictator, who does not care about equality and employs whatever heinous means necessary to achieve what he wants.

There is Snowball, the softer leader, who genuinely believed in progress and equality, who wanted to build a windmill only for the progress of his people, who was exiled by brute force. He has been compared to Leon Trotsky. He is remembered as a revolutionary but faced Stalin’s opposition.

And there are others like Squealer, Napoleon’s propagandist, who deforms the truth and leads the mass populace down a road of ignorance and contentment with the unjust circumstances.

And Boxer (horse), the most steadfast and hardworking of the animals, but who could not understand what changes were happening around him, due to his inability to read and his blissful ignorance. He represents the masses, who work to the bone, for leaders who mean nothing to them but harm. They are uneducated, and hence can’t decide the better for them. They can only think, “I will work harder.” They are loyal to their own destruction.

However odd and far-fetched it may seem, I want to draw my very own parallels.

Okay, hear me out, ‘cause I’m sort of proud of this.

The Rebellion

Okay, this is where the animals come together to overpower and throw out the unkind and unjust rulers, who are the humans who have been wrongfully in power for far too long. That’s the people of the subcontinent revolting against the British colonizers. (Now I get that in this way, the parallel can be drawn to literally every other revolt in the world against foreign colonizers or invaders, but the subcontinent revolt is the textbook story I grew up with, so we’re going with that right now.)

Old Major

So, the visionary, the one who wakes the people up and sparks the rebellion, and dies before seeing what became of it, that’s Allama Iqbal. The one who urged the people of the nation to see reason, to reconnect with their origins. (This could also be any other revolutionary personality during this War of Independence, but come on, no one can be mad about Allama Iqbal, right?)

Snowball

Now, I don’t really want to name historical figures out of a hat, since history is murky, the actual truth is always unknown, and the actual good and bad of motives of personalities is controversial and argued upon to this day. And for the sake of being loyal to the truth, and not following the footsteps of misrepresentation and misinformation like Napoleon’s regime, I’ll simply name Liaqat Ali Khan as the parallel. From my meek knowledge of our history, he was an all right dude, and was assassinated, which in most cases automatically gives you martyr status. So, that’s there.

Napoleon

Oh, this is fun. I will say that after the establishment of Pakistan, the blood thirsty greed engulfed power mongers who did not care about the development of the masses, but for their unending grasp of power are the military rulers of early Pakistan. If we look at 1958 to 2008, Pakistan’s military leadership was in place for 33 of the 50 years.

You know what that means? That means for 5 decades of early Pakistan’s existence (the most formative and crucial years of a new country), undemocratic military leadership dominated for two-thirds of the time. That is an immense stretch of history for the masses to be wronged, for institutions to be hollowed, for the foundation of a country to be eroded, and for the people’s identity to be reshaped in its entirety.

The Napoleon who broke down the windmill and kept training his dogs to become more lethal so they could protect him, that’s the barbaric leadership that drew resources from key institutions of science and health in early Pakistan and devoted them to military assets.

Now, all in all, what Orwell wanted to say with this Disney-fied version of a dystopian tragedy is not just, “A Revolution going wrong just because it did.” He pointed out all the reasons so subtly and yet they packed such a gut punch to the face.

This piece of his taught us that, “A revolution went wrong, not because the oppressed had fewer resources or were fewer in masses, but because they were uneducated, ignorant, and had no hold over the truth.”

Animal Farm taught us that the preservation of truth and the awareness of it are the pivotal stones in the structure of a society. If truth is not preserved and you are ignorant of it, or simply don’t care, you are instrumental in the destruction of yourself and your society.

Thank you so much for your extensive reading time. I wish upon you educated reading hours and a well-aware presence of your history and your present.