Animal Farm is a dystopian novel written by British author George Orwell, published in 1947. The book reflects and satirizes the revolution in the Soviet Union by using animals to represent people, and expresses Orwell’s worries about the future of humanity which may go into a century of a world that power is highly centralized. 

The book’s main characters are a group of pigs who live on a farm. Due to the cruelness of the farmer Mr. Jones, the animals’ leader, a pig named Old Major, tells the animals before he dies that they must revolt to save themselves. The pigs, including Snowball and Napoleon, lead the animals in an uprising and they drive away Mr. Jones. Snowball and Napoleon become their leaders, and the farm adopts the Seven Commandments of Animalism. Snowball teaches the other animals to read and write, while Napoleon trains his puppies to be his soldiers. Then, when Snowball announces they are going to build a windmill, Napoleon releases the dogs and expels Snowball. Snowball is later killed by the dogs. Under Napoleon’s control, the animals are oppressed more and more, and he modifies the commandments when he needs excuses to do something. He also asserts the Snowball remains in the area wants to sabotage the farm, in order to produce fear in the other animals. Finally, the pigs behave like men and meet with the humans, while the animals who originally took part in the uprising are already dead. In the end, the animal’s society seems to have reverted to the beginning.

Throughout the book, Orwell pictures the future of utopian or communist society as very bleak, and at the end of the book, when the animals look through the window to see what is happening inside: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which” (Orwell 141). Their comrade president finally returns to the same people they tried to defeat. 

The biggest reason that this book is so popular is its sharp political metaphor. In the book, readers can read a character and find the corresponding person in real history. For example, Old Major, who first brought the thought of communism into the animal farm, is Vladimir Lenin, while Snowball is Leon Trotsky and Napoleon is Joseph Stalin. In real life, Trotsky was expelled by Stalin because of their divergence on politics, and was eventually killed in Mexico. Also, the high-pressure rules of Napoleon and his policy of killing every animal who goes against him is exactly what Stalin did in the Soviet Union. Besides, the way that Orwell describes the story is very realistic, which corresponds to the style of the story.

I would highly recommend this book because it provides readers with a perspective of utopian and communist societies, helps readers to understand how the utopia works, and also lets readers experience the story.