Four legs good
Two legs bad
Four legs good
Two Legs better
All animals are equal
All animals are
equal,
but some animals are more
equal than others
The book is a fable that is based on the development of the $oviet union/ stalinist regime.
Conflict is on many levels > I think the easiest way to start exploring conflict is to go over the characters with a fine comb.
Here is a summary:
The different animals are different types of economic classes
Mr. Jones = Tsar/ former rule.
Pigs = bolsheviks / politicians (very applicable comparision imo
)
Old Major = Lenin (dies to leave legacy of idealism to the farm/russia)
Napoleon = Stalin (conflict with snowball over leadership)
Napoleon's dogs = Stalins secret police (dogs trained at early age - intertextual reference to pavlov's dogs - i.e associationalist/conditioning epistemology)
Snowball = Trotsky (conflict with napoleon over leadership)
Moses = Church/Religion (favourable to Tsarist, and doesn't generally approve of the revolution UNTIL it ironically becomes like Mr. Jones/ even worse than mr.jones ) There is a conflict between the pigs (bolsheviks) and moses.
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, Geneva]"The pigs had an even harder struggle to counteract the lies put about by Moses, the tame raven. Moses, who was Mr. Jones's especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which al animals went when they died. It was situated somewhere up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work but some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, and the pigs had to argue very hard to persuade them that there was no such place." [/FONT]
Boxer & Clover = proletariat (unskilled labour class drawn to napoleon) - boxer and clover are particularly stupid and uneducated characters. suseptible to their own gulibility in blindly following the pigs............
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, Geneva]"Their most faithful disciples were the two carthorses, Boxer and Clover. Those two had great difficulty in thinking anything out for themselves, but having once accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments." [/FONT]
Boxer is sent to the glue factory after not meeting production expectation (the reference is to communist cruelty towards it's own supporters)
Squaler = propaganda bolshevik/ monopoly on publication
Mollie = Middle Class & also Aristocracy/upper class & those most resistant to the bolsheviks. (It has been argued both ways that mollie represents middle or upper class....this is indicated by the sugar and ribbons and mollie's exodus from the farm) Mollie is most resistant to the bolsheviks because she won't get her sugar ( a representation of salary/wealth/prestige or thereabouts)
Benjamin = Political Cynic. Doesn't believe the pigs bullshit. Only really takes a stand when Boxer gets sent to the glue factory.
(opposed to pigs, but not in direct action)
Muriel = educated working class - opposed to napoleon but not in a position to take a stand.
Mr. Frederick = Germany. (initially a friend, but has alterior motives, and then becomes an enemy)
Pilkington = The Allies (USA, England, France, etc.,) Friends of animal farm against mr. frederick, but then hints at the end of the book of upcoming conflict.
Rats, rabbits & wild animals = Political enemies of communists. They are wild and can't be controlled. Opposed to, and in conflict with the pigs.
Pigeons = Propaganda to other countries/ farms etc.,
That's pretty much it.
Read it over and over.
Enjoy this masterwork of political satire.