In a nutshell, Animal Farm is a very blatant criticism of the Stalin regime and how it ruined the original idea of communism. One can even go as far to generalize that it could be a critique of ANY totalitarian regime and how, in the end, everything goes to shit. Animal Farm takes important Russian figures, such as Lenin and Stalin and transforms them into animals. The story starts out on a farm in England and an idea given by an elderly pig named Old Major. Life on the farm is hard and cruel, and the animals receive little reward for their efforts. Old Major calls for a revolution against man, and the running of the farm by the animals. After Old Major dies the animals revolt and start to run the farm by themselves. The pigs become the "leaders" (I put that in quotes because all animals are supposed to be equal on Animal Farm) and teach the other animals reading/writing, develop plans, and overall improve the quality of life. The animals have more food and more time off than they did when the humans ran the farm, but not all is as perfect as it seems. The two head boars, Napolean and Snowball never agree on anything and one day Napolean and a pack of dogs that he trained (whom I think are a reference to the KGB) run Snowball off the farm and take over. Under Napolean everything changes. The animals work harder, have less food, and watch while the pigs do everything that no animal was supposed to do. The pigs slowly start adopting human habits such as drinking, trading with humans, wearing clothes, and lastly, walking upright. None of the other animals are truly smart enough to really understand the horror of this situation, so they go on working. Things get so bad that animals are executed for possible treason and even the hardest worker, a horse named Boxer, got sent to the slaughter house when he became too sick to work. The last scene, and probably the best one in the book, is when some of the animals spy on a meeting between the pigs and the humans. They look back and forth between the two groups, and can't tell who is a pig and who is a human.
While I would love to delve more into the story, I don't want to rewrite the novel. Animal Farm shows that ideas that are meant to be ideal for the masses can be ruined by a greedy individual. I love how over 60 years later this book is still so fresh and could be applied to regimes operating today. I give Animal Farm 4/5 stars and recommend it to anyone who loves a good story and one that makes you think.
