Student Question
How are dream and reality represented in the novel Animal Farm?
Quick answer:
In Animal Farm, dreams represent the idealistic vision of a society free from human oppression, as articulated by Old Major. Initially, the animals' dream of equality seems attainable after they overthrow the humans. However, reality diverges as the pigs, led by Napoleon, consolidate power and corrupt the original ideals. Orwell illustrates how political reality often undermines dreams, culminating in a regime indistinguishable from the oppressive human rule it replaced.
Dreams do not turn into reality, because when the animals try to live Old Major’s dream they are not able to maintain it.
The old boar Old Major has a “strange dream” in the opening pages of the story. In his dream, all of the animals live a communist, collective lifestyle. They will maintain this lifestyle without the aid of human beings. This is the dream Old Major shares with the animals on that fateful night in the barn.
`Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals….’ (ch 1)
The animals are able to successfully kick the humans out, and they christen their new farm Animal Farm . They develop committees of leadership, but...
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most of the important decisions are made by the pigs from the earliest. The pigs claim they are smarter and more important, and need more privileges. Two pigs namedSnowball and Napoleon are vying for leadership.
Napoleon does not do much, but he craves power. With the help of his propaganda pig Squealer and other pigs who follow his lead, Napoleon is able to drive Snowball out. While early versions of Animal Farm, contain commandments promoting equality, Napoleon and the other pigs slowly adapt them to a more dictatorial leadership style. Eventually there is no difference between the abuses of the pigs as leaders and the neglect and abuses of the humans as leaders.
How do dreams and reality interact in Animal Farm?
Orwell starts off the work with the basic premise that at the heart of all political change lies the ability to dream. It is Old Major's "dream" that causes all the animals to meet up in the shed. It is this "dream" that he articulates which becomes the basis for political reality. The pigs become caretaker of this dream. The revolution is the political embodiment of this dream and with the animals' success, the dream of change is realized.
From this point, Orwell illuminates how the desire to control political reality might chip away at such dreams. Snowball embraces the hope of converging political reality and political dreaming, but the forces of Squealer and Napoleon are much more driven by political reality. Snowball's expulsion is a distinct moment in which political reality is shown to be much more important and essential than political dreams. As Napoleon increases his control on the farm, this element becomes more pronounced. By the end, when there is no physical difference between animals and humans, it has become clear that political reality in the hands of those in the position of power is much more preferable to political dreaming.