Why did George Orwell use allegory in Animal Farm?

To understand why Orwell wrote Animal Farm as an allegory, it is useful to look at his explanation in the Preface to the Ukrainian Edition in which he outlines two key reasons.

Firstly, Orwell states that he felt compelled to tell the world about the horrors being committed by Stalin in the USSR:

"It was of the utmost importance to me that people in western Europe should see the Soviet regime for what it really was."

For Orwell, Stalin's politics were so far removed from true Socialism that he wanted to tell the world about it.

Secondly, he wanted to portray this story in a way which made it easy for people to understand:

"I thought of exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily understood by almost anyone and which could be easily translated into other languages."

The inspiration for a farmyard came a short time later when he saw a little boy, aged around ten years old, driving a "huge cart-horse" and whipping it "whenever he tried to turn." It suddenly occurred to Orwell that if this animal realised its strength, it could easily overpower the boy and the rest of our society. From this, Animal Farm was born. 

To read the Preface in full, please see the first reference link provided.

Why did George Orwell use allegory in Animal Farm?

On one level, Orwell wanted to write a fable that could be enjoyed by people of all ages and situations. By using animals as characters for the story, he was following the pattern of many previous writers of fables, dating all the way back to Aesop. Other characteristics of the story also follow the traditional format used in telling fables.

On a deeper level, Orwell wanted to express his condemnation of the rise to power of the Soviets and the evils he saw in the leadership of the Communist Party. The book was written during World War II, at which time England was an ally of the Soviet Union against Germany, so a book condemning the Soviet Union was a politically unpopular thing to write. The book was not published until after the War in Europe had been concluded.

In an allegory, characters and events stand for something else. In this case, the characters in the novel stand for significant figures in twentieth-century Russian history.

By presenting his story as an allegory, Orwell was able to highlight actions, attitudes, and characteristics of the historic figures he was portraying without directly identifying any of those people. He presented the story and allowed the readers to draw their own conclusions and find their own lessons - the ultimate purpose of an allegorical story.

In his novel Animal Farm, why does George Orwell use allegorical methods to discuss the Soviet Union of his day?

George Orwell wrote his allegory titled Animal Farm, a satire on the Soviet Union and its dictator, Joseph Stalin, during the middle of World War II.  Before the war, Stalin and the Soviets had been the ideological enemies of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.  Just before the war broke out, Stalin found it convenient to sign a non-aggression pact with Hitler – a move that shocked and disillusioned many communists overseas.  (Some, however, loyally defended the pact.) When war did break out, Stalin and Hitler divided Poland between themselves. Thus, Stalin became almost an ally of Hitler.  In 1941, however, Hitler surprised Stalin by launching a massive attack on the Soviet Union.

In the war against Hitler, the Soviet Union was now an ally of the western democracies, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, and the British Commonwealth. Many people in the west recognized that Stalin’s dictatorship was in many ways at least as bad as Hitler’s and that the alliance with the Soviet Union was merely an alliance of convenience. If and when the war against Hitler was won, tensions with the Soviets were almost inevitable.  Such tensions became especially unavoidable when, in the immediate aftermath of the war, the Soviets imposed communist dictatorships on many of the countries of eastern Europe.

Orwell, who had long been deeply suspicious of many kinds of authoritarianism, wrote Animal Farm as an allegory because openly attacking the Soviet Union might have seemed damaging to an “ally” during a time of war.  However, the allegory Orwell composed is so transparently anti-Soviet that no one could possibly misunderstand the object of his satire. The novel was not published until after the end of the war; it was rejected by several publishers who feared offending the Soviets.

Orwell thus had practical reasons for writing an allegory. However, Orwell may also have felt that writing the book as an allegory would make it more interesting to read than another dry political tract would have been.  All the charges made against the Soviet Union in Animal Farm were well-known charges and could easily have been expressed again in yet another essay.  By writing the book as an allegorical novel, Orwell made old charges seem fresh and clever.

Orwell himself wrote that he merely hoped to find a publisher who

(a) has got some paper and (b) isn't in the arms of Stalin. The latter is important. This book is murder from the Communist point of view, though no names are mentioned.

Why did George Orwell choose to write Animal Farm as an allegory, considering his life and societal conditions?

One look at the dates for George Orwell's life and the country in which he lived tell us much of the reason behind the author's choice to write Animal Farm as an allegory.

Orwell, a British citizen, lived during the first half of the twentieth century, from 1903-1950. Thus, Orwell lived through both World War I and World War II. Ironically, in 1936 and 1937, Orwell had been in Spain during their civil war and had fought on the side of the communist-backed Republican governement (although Orwell fought more because of his dislike of the Fascists than any love for communism).

Given Orwell's experience in Spain, plus his experience living through the two World Wars, in which his fellow Britons were actually allies of the Russians, it seems clear that Orwell could not openly criticize the Russians without putting himself in some peril. In fact, George Orwell is not the author's real name, but rather Eric Arthur Blair. Additionally, in an apparent effort to put further distance between himself and blatant criticism of the Russians, Orwell's original title for the novella was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story.

Furthermore, when we consider that Orwell started writing Animal Farm in 1943, at the height of World War II, the author's need to employ allegory becomes more apparent (the novella was finally published in August 1945). Thus, to protect himself and his family, it seems necessary for Orwell to publish such a novella as an allegory.