Fables and Allegories
An Introduction to Animal Farm
What do you know?
• What do you know or remember about
fables?
• Have you ever heard of an allegory
before?
• What is satire?
The Ant and the Grasshopper:
a Fable
Aesop
Probably the most well
known writer of fables
is Aesop, who lived in
Ancient Greece.
He wrote “The Ant and
the Grasshopper ” and
lots of other fables still
popular today.
Quotations from Aesop
• Don’t cry over spilt milk.
• Don’t count your chickens before
they’ve hatched.
• Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
• Appearances are often deceiving.
• Birds of a feather flock together.
• Slow and steady wins the race.
Fable
• Fables are very short
• Fables feature nonhuman characters who
have been personified to an extreme
– such as animals, plants, inanimate
objects, mythical creatures, or forces of
nature who think, talk, act, fight,
disobey, and obey
• Fables end with a short moral lesson
“The Ant and the Grasshopper”
is a Fable!
• It is very short
• The animal characters talk, sing, think,
plan, and feel
• It teaches a moral or lesson: it is best to
prepare for days of need.
Allegory
• Allegories are forms of extended metaphors,
which continue throughout the whole text
• An allegory is a piece of “art”work in which
every part has at least two meanings:
– the literal meaning
– and an abstract or symbolic meaning
• The underlying meaning of an allegory has
social, religious, or political significance
The “Ant and the Grasshopper” is an
Allegory, too!
Literal Meaning
The Ant
Corn
The Grasshopper
Summer
Winter
Symbolic Meaning
= Hardworking People
= Work / Preparation
= Short-sighted People
= Opportunity Time
= Hard Times
Satire
• Ridicules people, practices, governments, or
institutions in order to reveal their weaknesses
and provoke improvement
• Uses wit, ridicule, irony, sarcasm, parody,
reversal, and hyperbole
• Reader must be careful to pay attention to hints
and clues of the reality of the situation beyond
the façade of a seemingly innocent story
Animal Farm is all 3: a fable, an allegory, and satire!
Animal Farm as a Fable:
• Has animals: sheep, horses, cows, pigs,
chickens, ravens, dogs, donkeys, ducks
• Teaches many lessons:
– A perfect society is only as perfect as the
members that make it up.
– No society will ever have real equality as long
as some people take advantage of others.
– Don’t always believe what you hear and see.
– Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Animal Farm as an Allegory:
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Literal = Symbolic
Manor Farm = Russia
Animals Revolution = Russian Revolution
Animalism = Communism
Old Major = Karl Marx
Napoleon = Joseph Stalin
Snowball = Leo Trotsky
Squealer = Russian Propaganda and Media
Pigs = Communists
Horses = Workers
Windmill = Stalin’s 5 year improvement plan
Dogs = KGB or police
Animal Farm as Satire:
• It ridicules society and those who try to make society better
through the implementation of ideas
• It ridicules Joseph Stalin’s reign of power
• It parodies with wit Stalin and his government as evil pigs
(literally and figuratively)
• It shows reversal in that people can be animals in the way that
they treat, exploit, and manipulate each other for their own gain
• It exaggerates how a lack of literacy, reading, and education
makes people easy targets for tyrants, dictators, and those who
would use propaganda to manipulate the masses
• It shows how rhetoric, the art of persuasive writing and
speaking, and propaganda are more important to maintaining
power than goodness, competence, fairness, and other virtues