Christopher Rush
Page numbers are taken from the digital version of the Great Books of the Western World set, second edition.
Animal Farm has become such a well-known book, trying to conjure new, fresh insights about this story is challenging. Even people who haven’t read it likely know that it is a cautionary tale of fascism as an anthropomorphic recreation of Lenin and Stalin and Trotsky and actual history, since by now its message and influence have become ubiquitous. For this exploration, then, let us put the genuine horror and heartbreak of the Russian Revolution and Stalinist Russia aside, much as we set aside aspects of World War II when we want to enjoy Hogan’s Heroes or The Great Escape, and look at Animal Farm just as it is: a mostly funny story. True, it does have a couple of very unfunny moments, particularly the confession scenes in which the dogs kill many of their fellow farm denizens. But aside from those brief moments, the rest of the story can be (with a fair amount of suspension of disbelief) a fairly good time.
The opening description of Mr. Jones and the state of the farm gives us a good reason to root for the animals: Mr. Jones is a drunkard who doesn’t always ensure the animals are protected and locked up (477) or even fed; the farm has piles of equipment, wood, building materials and all sorts of things scattered, dare we say, higgledy-piggledy around. These animals have an almost respectable motivation for wanting autonomy.
Old Major’s address gives Orwell the chance to bring in most of the characters in an almost mock Homeric or Pope-like fashion, which is fun by itself, but Boxer’s introduction is especially intriguing. In one sense, Boxer is the horse considered a noble, self-sacrificing character, perhaps the unsung hero of the story, but from the beginning Orwell gives us permission to think he is just a brainless goof (or a punchy ex-prize fighter?). He is respected for being a workhorse, but we are told he is not very bright, so he is no shoe-in for the hero (if this story even has one). Clover the mare, likewise, is presented humorously as the general mother of the farm, though she is no longer as spry as she used to be since she has lost her figure after having so many children, which also has affected her ability to remember. When this description, particularly of her wounded vanity at having lost her looks from her children, is applied to a horse, it is quite humorous. Moses the raven is not present, and it does not take a theology major to know whom he represents, and while Christian readers may feel they should be at least irritated by this character and Orwell’s presentation of religion, Moses doing no work and being the one who proclaims that the afterlife for hard-working animals is a place called Sugarcandy Mountain is so preposterous it is hard not to laugh, especially when we read how hard the pigs have to work to convince the others Sugarcandy Mountain does not exist (482).
Taken at face value, Old Major’s description of humans’ lack of utility is both accurate and ludicrously animal-centric. Man “does not give milk” (though the astute reader will know this is not a completely and permanently accurate statement of all humanity – though it likely flies over the head of most seventh graders, who inexplicably seem to be the major audience of this novel in America), “he does not lay eggs” (which is true, but neither do most of the animals at that conference), “he is too weak to pull the plough” (but he would not have to invent the plough if he were strong enough without it), and “he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits” (478). This last condition of man’s inferiority is wonderfully irrelevant – is catching rabbits a hallmark of value among animals?
Certainly one of the undercurrents for this novel is the poor memory of the animals. If we continue our premise of looking lightheartedly at the novel, we see Old Major has forgotten that he, as a pig, has likely contributed nothing substantial to the operation of the farm qua farm (and is guilty of the same four qualities with which he took issue with humans), and has forgotten that he used to be treated very nicely by Mr. Jones, even presented earlier in his life as a prized pig named Willingdon Beauty (477). He has also somehow gotten hefty in his old age, which likely indicates he has had access to plenty of food and has had to do very little work in response for quite some time. Thus the novel sets out on the premise of the animals forgetting the past and not appreciating the present and continues on this theme throughout.
His closing words that most animals “are not allowed to reach their natural span” yet he is a lucky exception, since he has lived a long life and gotten many sows pregnant (this he remembers), and then dies peacefully in his sleep after a long, successful life is reminiscent of Swift at the end of “A Modest Proposal.” Do as I say, not as I do – the great pig motto. But this is then topped by “Beasts of England” sounding like a mix of “Clementine and La Cucaracha” (480) – that must be quite a tune as well.
As the animals acclimate to Animalism, the systematic philosophy Snowball and Napoleon turn Old Major’s dying dream into, the narrator is quite overtly on the side of the pigs, calling questions about the afterlife and the inevitability of the revolution “elementary remarks” (481), as if the pigs are presenting something so obviously helpful but the slow-witted animals cannot get on board, which is further evidenced by their inability to become meaningfully literate. (Pigs becoming literate and learning how to write and read with their hooves is a fantastical element.) Additionally, Mr. Jones is continually described as a bad person and an increasingly worse farmer. He drinks excessively, mistreats and neglects the animals, and overreacts in anger when the hungry animals simply want the food they are supposed to have, since he should take care of these important aspects of his livelihood at the very least, if not out of Christian stewardship (482). The book gives us many reasons to think the animal rebellion is a good thing. “His men were idle and dishonest, the fields were full of weeds, the buildings wanted roofing, the hedges were neglected, and the animals were underfed” (482). We should root for the animals just like the narrator does.
The rapid success of the initial rebellion and impressive defense during the farmer’s second attack are perhaps the most humorous scenes in the book. The rebellion is successful because of its swift and surprising nature. Despite their initial pseudo-bravado at whipping seemingly defenseless animals, when the animals offer even the most basic resistance, Mr. Jones and the farmhands skedaddle after “only a moment or two” (482). Mrs. Jones’s silent reaction through the window, in her only moment in the novel while awake, is to pack up and flee not only the farm but her husband (483) – it is hard to envision this episode without “Yakety Sax” accompanying it.
The later defense of the farm from the humans’ perspective begins by showing us the humans’ increasing anger that the animals are succeeding at operating a farm without human leadership and that their own animals are starting to whistle and sing “Beasts of England” – to which the humans naturally respond by whipping and attacking the animals, again giving us reason to side with the animals (489). We are also pleased that the animals are succeeding on their own initiative and industry. The defense from the animals’ perspective on the farm begins with a casual remark that Snowball “had studied an old book of Julius Caesar’s campaigns which he had found in the farmhouse” (490). Mr. Jones having a copy of Caesar is ludicrous enough, but picturing this pig pouring over Caesar’s Gallic Wars is just delightful. While Orwell likely envisions this in English, the temptation to picture Snowball reading it in pig Latin is difficult to fight – certainly more difficult than the farmers prove to be.
The defense is a fine comic scene for two main reasons: the ease of the defense and the absence of significant death on either side. With Caesar’s tactics firmly in place, the animals gull the farmers into a false sense of security and early success, only for the animals to attack in earnest. That the humans forget they have sticks and a shotgun (for the most part) adds to the farcical atmosphere. Of course, if they had brought more guns and used them, it would be difficult to pretend this was a comic story, but on the other hand the story would not have been written or have had such a lasting effect.
While it is sad that a sheep dies, it is not a sheep we know, which thus does not require much emotional response on our part – war is tough, and since the sheep have been presented as primarily mindless (and annoying) echoes for Napoleon’s ideas, losing only one sheep against armed men feels like an overwhelming victory. This is abetted by the fact the human boy, who seemed dead and threatened to make Boxer feel bad, was just stunned and recovers. The animals have done, in effect, nothing wrong, and no harm was done all around (491).
The fate of most of the main named characters could lend support to our admittedly tenuous premise of the book being a dark comedy. Snowball, despite his initial ringleader status and his anti-human rhetoric (though, again, the book does not present this as necessarily a bad thing), starts to offer many positive and hopeful goals for the animals and their farm, giving the animals purpose and reasons to keep working hard to make the farm prosper for themselves and future generations (putting them in committees, no doubt for their own good, another rueful aside). This is mostly seen in the windmill, of course, and the association of this major symbol with Don Quixote and his windmills is another comedic aspect of the book (though that may likely need to be explained to the junior high students reading it). Snowball’s growing quarrels with Napoleon are presented as genuine disagreements, not a dissembling act, so the reader naturally starts to align with Snowball over Napoleon, the clear villain even in the comic interpretation here – though the animals, laughably, believe whichever pig they heard last (493-94). Despite the failed assassination attempt on his life and subsequent successful assassination of his character, Snowball successfully flees Napoleon’s farm and lives a happier life. This incongruity of the humans being mostly presented as evil or at least malicious and Snowball’s happier life among them and away from the farm is presented as a relief for the reader, and comedies, especially in the Shakespearean tradition, expect our heroes (and even the redeemed villains) to live to see another day after the final curtain or tableaux.
While Mollie the mare is not presented as a leader or hero, she is mainly a kind of low comic relief, fond of ribbons and sugar, symbols of her subservience to human oppression, and while the book gives us a growing sense of tension that something bad is going to happen to her, she, too, escapes the farm and returns to a life of sugar and ribbons – free from Napoleon (492).
The fate of Boxer will likely be a major stumbling block for many readers in thinking Animal Farm could be a comic tale, since he has a sad fate (517). Admittedly, the scene of Boxer being tricked into the glue factory van and the sound of his desperate hoof clangs are hard to laugh at, and it is a scene of sorrow and mild horror – but we also know Boxer is not long for this world, anyway. His simplemindedness and stalwartness are praised throughout the book, but he is also overly loyal to Napoleon, who is clearly the villain, and that he cannot see that is no mark in his favor. In his most perplexing moment, Boxer, and even he should know the dogs are under Napoleon’s control, is attacked by the dogs then looks to Napoleon to see how he should respond to the dogs that have clearly just tried to assassinate him (504). The desire to think of Boxer as a noble hero should be tempered by his devotion to the villain, even if it is done through ignorance (but a stubborn ignorance, since he willfully refuses to listen to anything said against Napoleon). He does work himself to death for the farm, which is admirable, but since is also effectively done for anyway, from a dark comic perspective, by going to the knacker’s, at least his corpse will provide for others, which is more than could be said if he had just finished dying on the farm and became a burden by making the animals either have to dig a massive grave for him or leave his corpse out to rot.
Admittedly, the fate of several non-named characters, as acknowledged at the beginning of this examination, does yield a pair of frightening moments, both of them entailing the dogs viciously killing animals that confess to being rebellious and in league with Snowball after he is excommunicated from the farm (and eventually the scapegoat for all the ills that befall the farm). It is hard to dismiss these scenes or find the potential humor in them, though it is interesting that the animals in the first scene are those that do admit they were rebellious and complaining and thus disruptive to the united efforts of the farm (504). The book is tacit on why they make their confessions – likely we are to assume Napoleon or Squealer intimidated them behind the scenes into confessing publically, but the narration does not even hint at that, so it is somewhat possible the animals felt genuine guilt and are sacrificing themselves for the greater good. And the first victims are pigs, which is surprising, considering Napoleon has no reason to demonstrate “equality” for guilt among “equal animals” at this point in the novel. Still, the confessions result in a “pile of corpses,” which is difficult to laugh away. Even trying to interpret Animal Farm as a “dark” comedy is strained by the pile of corpses, pervasive aroma of blood in the air, and the increasingly vicious dogs under Napoleon’s ever more hypocritical rule. Trying to categorize Animal Farm as a Shakespearean “problem play” like Troilus and Cressida, for example, may be more credible in other circumstances.
Still, aside from these moments, the majority of the novel and the final scene may give us tenuous permission to look at Animal Farm comically (even Hogan’s Heroes has a few serious moments). New animals come to the farm and make it a success in the intervening years before the denouement of the novel (518), even if it is a pale shadow of what was dreamed of at the beginning. And while we know they are likely somewhat worse off living condition and food-wise, Orwell does allow for great dignity for the animals, since “they never lost, even for an instant, their sense of honour and privilege in being members of Animal Farm. They were still the only farm in the whole county—in all England!—owned and operated by animals” (520), and thus the book itself allows for a fairly happy (or at least content) ending even without the strain we have been placing on it.
We have alluded to Shakespearean comedy already, and one of the hallmarks of Shakespearean comedy is the occurrence of transformation. The hypocrisy of the pigs embracing all of the rules initially deemed punishable by death can be a source of humor, particularly the great lamentation for Comrade Napoleon on his deathbed … only to find out it is just a hangover (512). The pigs starting to walk on two legs and wearing clothes can similarly be viewed easily in a comic vein (especially if the reader accompanies these scenes with lighthearted incidental music).
The apex of the transformation in the final tableaux with the pigs fully becoming indistinguishable from the humans with whom they have just allied, and the farm returning to its original name, may be intended to be horrific, as all their sacrifice for autonomy has been undone, but it can also be darkly comic, as the very ringleaders of the rebellion who seemed quite sincere at breaking away from human influence have now become the very thing they initially despised, coupled with the fact the first thing these new allies do is start arguing over accusations of cheating at gambling.[1] The reader may have genuine permission to picture the beleaguered but hopeful veterans staring through window at this final transmutation with an almost ’80s-sitcom ending shrug and laugh track explosion.
This is not to belittle the moment, of course, but if looking at Animal Farm not as a dire warning or fantastical cautionary tale, such a finale could be possible. If we are willing, at least for a time, to set aside the genuine sorrow that George Orwell was writing about, and if we, a century later can acknowledge his purpose but indulge ourselves for a few moments, we can view this novel as a beast fable perhaps in the vein of Aesop or Fontaine, with a Shakespearean twist here and there. In this light, with mostly happy(ish) endings for the characters, a sense of pride and continuing hope for many of the animals, and the villains becoming what they initially despise (and thus perhaps a more fitting punishment than outright death), it may be possible to enjoy Animal Farm as a comedy, if a dark comedy at best.
[1] When Pilkington and Napoleon both play the ace of spades, it is hard not to think of Harpo Marx’s never-ending supply of aces of spades in Animal Crackers, ironically enough.
Redeeming Pandora 