...this grim little parable is by no means about Russia alone. Orwell is concerned to show how revolutionary ideals of justice, equality and fraternity always shatter in the event. The ironic reversals in Animal Farm could be fairly closely related to real events since the work was written--this is not the least of their effectiveness--as well as to the events on which they were based...
-A. E. Dyson, The Crazy Fabric: Essays in Irony, 1965
It is not merely that revolutions are self-destructive--Orwell also is painting a grim picture of the human condition in the political twentieth century, a time which he has come to believe marks the end of the very concept of human freedom.... At the end, all the representatives of the various ideologies are indistinguishable--they are all pigs, all pigs are humans. Communism is no better and no worse than capitalism or fascism; the ideals of socialism were long ago lost in Clover\'s uncomprehending gaze over the farm... perhaps more distressing yet is the realization that everyone, the good and the bad, the deserving and the wicked, are not only contributors to the tyranny, are not only powerless before it, but are unable to understand it... The potential hope of the book is finally expressed only in terms of ignorance (Boxer), wistful inarticulateness (Clover), or the tired, cynical belief that things never change (Benjamin). The inhabitants of this world seem to deserve their fate.
-Robert A. Lee, Orwell\'s Fiction, 1969
[Animal Farm] has taken its place alongside Candide and Gulliver\'s Travels as one of those parables which embody permanent truths: a myth that will long outlast the particular historical events which form its background. Now that it is possible to view the work in context, freed of the emotional circumstances surrounding its publication, we can recognize it for what it is: a dystopia [an anti-utopia, an imaginary picture of the worst possible world], a satirical commentary upon human societies which vividly recalls Swift\'s...
-J. R. Hammond, A George Orwell Companion, 1982
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