Animal Farm by George Orwell - Thomas Jefferson Education

This Study Guide is prepared as a companion to the Mentoring in the Classics Series. For more information, visit: TJEd.org/MIC

Copyright © Oliver & Rachel DeMille, TJEd.org “An Education to Match Your Mission"

Study Guide: Animal Farm by George Orwell

Prepared by Oliver DeMille

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This month’s reading is available in most libraries and booksellers, and on Amazon. The Introductory Mentoring Audio for this book (provided via links in your course email) is presented by Oliver DeMille. Please take a moment to download your audio content to your computer immediately so you have uninterrupted access to it! The Debriefing Audio that follows at the end of this month will consist of a group discussion of the Mentoring Prompt (below). The Facebook Discussion Group has a dedicated “event” where you can interact with other subscribers about this book.

Level 5* Mentor Prompts:

1. This is a “broken”** story. Is the Animal Farm less or more broken than our modern society? Explain your answer.

a. How is it similar? b. How is it dissimilar? c. Why do we allow this?

2. As you go through the book, make a list of: a. specific parallels between Animal Farm and our society b. differences between Animal Farm and our society

3. What is your overall opinion of, feelings about, and/or takeaways your responses to questions 1 and 2? Write down your answer. (This is truly worth conserving in your book for later readings or readers.)

4. How is the government in Animal Farm like a church, religion or cult? 5. Is #4 good or bad? Discuss. 6. Find and clip at least 5 newspaper articles with examples of the kind of manipulation that

the character Squealer uses in Animal Farm. * Levels 1 - 5 of reading are discussed in the Mentoring content for Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea. If you are unfamiliar with the “levels of engagement” with the classics that Oliver taught in that audio, we highly recommend that you review it and the corresponding Study Guide to gain the full benefit of this course. **For more information on this “broken” designation, and the other three labels that can be applied to stories, see our summary of The Healing Power of Stories by Daniel Taylor, here >>

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Ideas for Writing or Discussion:

1. What does the opening scene (Chapter 1, the meeting of the animals in the barn to listen to Old Major’s speech) remind you of in other books and/or movies? Possible similarities: Babe, Charlotte’s Web, etc.

2. Is life for most humans “miserable, laborious, and short?” Explain your answer.

3. Are we, as Old Major put it, “forced to work to the last atom of our strength” in this life?

Why would a pig say this? Horses work on farms, but pigs eat and sleep. They don’t work. Why would Orwell make this a point? Discuss.

4. The pigs turn out to be the revolutionaries and then the new upper elite class in this

book—is this Orwell’s way of saying that the elite classes use rhetoric (like: “forced to work to the last atom of our strength”)? Or is there some other meaning? Explain.

5. The symbolism of humans as the upper classes and animals as the lower classes is very

blunt. Aristocracies have long considered the lower classes animal-like. This is offensive to American sensibilities, but would have been more directly resonant with European readers. Looking past the smugness of this viewpoint, how accurate do you think the symbol is? Do the lower classes sometimes look at the upper class like farm animals look at humans—like masters?

6. Consider the following phrases and translations from symbolism to plain English:

“Man is the only real enemy we have.” “The elite wealthy class is the only real enemy we have.”

“All the evils of this life of ours spring from the tyranny of human beings.” “All the evils of this life of ours spring from the tyranny of the wealthy elites.”

“All men are enemies. All animals are comrades.” “All elites are enemies. All people from the working class are comrades.”

“Remember always your duty of enmity towards Man and all his ways.” “Remember always your duty of enmity towards elites and all their ways.”




These are taken directly from the teachings of Karl Marx--which was Orwell’s point. He was attempting to show how the workers in communist nations were taught to think. Discuss.

7. There are many other symbols in the book. For example, Old Major tells the animals that

they must not do anything like Man, or follow Man’s ways at all. Yet the first action taken by the pigs after Old Major’s speech is to teach themselves to read and write.

Why do they do this? Why does Orwell consider reading and writing essential to the pigs being successful in creating a revolution, and also successful in becoming the new leaders—in fact, the new elites? Discuss.

8. The second thing the pigs do is create a written document on the wall of the barn, a

constitution or code to govern the animal’s society. Why does Orwell put the creation of law as the second act taken by the new elite class?

First, the pigs learn reading and writing, and second, they establish written law to govern society. Does this order follow the pattern of human societies? Discuss.

9. If today’s lower classes were suddenly put in charge of our modern nations, would they be more likely to act like current politicians, or would they take us in some significantly different direction? What do you think? Discuss.

10. Why is the first of the Seven Commandments about an enemy? Is this a good place to start

a constitution, or a society? Why or why not? Discuss. 11. The third things the pigs did was put all the other animals to work on the farm—with the

pigs doing no work except supervising. Again, does this follow the normal human pattern? Discuss.

12. Why did the pigs only supervise? Orwell said, at the beginning of Chapter 3: “The pigs did

not actually work, but directed and supervised the others. With their superior knowledge it was natural…”

This is an ironic statement by Orwell. If the pigs’ superior knowledge made it natural for them to supervise, wouldn’t the humans’ even more superior knowledge make it natural for them to supervise everyone, including the pigs? Discuss.

13. If superiority and inferiority are “natural”, then are class systems necessary and good? Is

this just the view of the pigs, or does Orwell believe it too? Discuss.




14. As a member of the British intelligentsia, it’s not likely that he had a typical American view of classes. Does he think “all men are created equal,” or “some people are naturally superior to others?” Discuss.

15. Following this same logic, is Orwell’s use of “all animals are created equal” perhaps a

subtle criticism of the American view? Clearly the book Animal Farm is a criticism against Russian Communism in Orwell’s day. But could he have used the occasion to poke at the American model as well? Discuss.

16. Orwell’s quote again: “With their superior knowledge it was natural that they should

assume the leadership.”

This brings up several important questions. (A) Should superiority be part of determining who should be the leaders? (B) Are men created equal, or are some of them “naturally superior” to others? (C) Should anyone ever be allowed to “assume” leadership—or should leadership be determined in other ways?

17. Why did only the pigs put forth resolutions?

18. The animals were all allowed to vote. What kind of voters do you think they were? What

was Orwell’s point with this? Was he perhaps criticizing systems where the under classes have the power to vote, but aren’t very good at it? If so, this criticizes Britain, Canada, and the United States, among others. Why do you think Orwell would do this? Why not just criticize Communism, Nazism, and other totalitarian systems? Why would he include criticisms of his own “side” and culture? Discuss.

19. When you read that the milk went missing, what was your first thought about it? What did

you think probably happened?

20. When you found out the truth about the missing milk, were you surprised?

21. Why do societies that strongly promote equality so often turn power to leaders who keep more for themselves—instead of actually enforcing real equality?

22. Do you know of, or can you find, any exceptions in history (any nations that focused on equality and then the leaders actually kept themselves on the same level as everyone else without any extra benefits)?

23. Names of main characters carry interesting symbolic meanings. For example:




• Snowball—speaker/orator • Napoleon—tyrant • Major—philosopher • Minimus—songs, poems, entertainment (minimus means “smallest” in Latin; is

Entertainment the least of the power centers in society?) • Squealer—the news (why would Orwell call the news media by the name

“Squealer”?) • Boxer—the working class

24. Why do you think Orwell used each of these symbolic names?

25. What other names and symbols do you find in Animal Farm?

26. In Chapter 5, the word “cunning” is used to praise Napoleon. Is cunning a good trait?

Why or why not?

27. What are Boxer’s two slogans? Why do you think Orwell listed these as the slogans of the working class?

28. What do these two slogan of the working class tell us about society?

29. Orwell wrote: “Napoleon announced that there would work on Sunday afternoons as

well. This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.” Discuss.

30. What do you think of the way Squealer (symbolizing the news media) used statistics and

data to sway the animals?

31. Is it symbolic that Squealer gathered the animals each Sunday morning to hear his statistics?

32. The awards Napoleon came up with were Hero, First Class and Hero, Second Class. Of all

the titles and names they could have used, do you think it’s significant that even awards of heroism were divided into “classes” and that the word “class” is used here? What was Orwell trying to say about caste/class systems?

33. Why did the pigs eventually create a law that the other animals would have to step aside

on a path when a pig went by?

What does this say about the “equal” system?




34. Even though the other animals had a lot more votes than the pigs, the pigs managed to convince everyone that their farm was run by democracy. How did they do this?

In reality, most of the “laws” were simply announced by the pigs and then enforced by the pigs and dogs. But the other animals still thought they had the final say because they had the power to vote. What was Orwell’s point with this?

35. How did you feel when you found out that the pigs sold Boxer’s body for a case of

whiskey?

36. Given this, what do think was the legacy of Boxer?

37. How does this apply in the real world?

38. At the end of the book when humans visited and had dinner with the pigs in the house, one human guest said that in his experience the animals on the farm worked longer and harder, and for less food and pay, than on any other farm in England. Discuss.

39. Why did Napoleon care so much about walking upright? It was a major effort for him, and

he didn’t do it very well, but he obviously made is a serious priority. Why?

40. Why on earth would Napoleon change the name of the farm to “Manor Farm”? This is deep symbolism. What was Orwell trying to show us?

41. In the last paragraph of the story, Orwell makes it clear that “men are pigs.” What was he

trying to communicate with this?

42. What happened to Snowball? Why did Orwell fail to bring closure to the story of Snowball after he fled from Animal Farm? What does this communicate? What was Orwell’s point?

43. See “Which Slogan Do You Believe,” which follows below in the Study Guide.

44. See “A Note from the Mentor,” which follows at the end of the Study Guide.




Additional Resources: • Orwell, 1984

• DeMille, 1913

• Skousen, The 5 Thousand Year Leap

• Bastiat, The Law

• Boyack, The Tuttle Twins Learn About the Law

• DeMille, LeaderShift

• DeMille, Freedom Matters

• DeMille, We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident

• The Declaration of Independence

• Palmer, Uncommon Sense

• Dickens, Great Expectations

• Austen, Sense and Sensibility

• Hugo, Les Miserables

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Which Slogan Do You Believe?

by Oliver DeMille

Class status has always been a touchy subject in America. It was one of the major—if not the major—cultural characteristics of life in the old world (a la Austen, Bronte, etc.), and during the Revolution many early Americans rejected the whole concept. The framers made titles of nobility unconstitutional, and Americans since the Founding era have looked down on anyone trying to assume upper-class “airs.” In the United States today, “class” has two major main meanings: (1) a person’s socio-economic status (lower, middle, upper class, etc.), and (2) the actual process of preparing the young for their “place” in society, known as attending class. Most people believe that one’s class experience in school largely determines which socio-economic class he or she belongs to during adulthood. The literary genius George Orwell well understood the power of both kinds of classes in society. In his classic Animal Farm, for example, the future tyrant Napoleon takes power in a very interesting—and predictable—way. He mostly ignores politics, speeches, debates, etc., and gives his full focus to educating the young. Later, when the puppies have grown into fully adult dogs, he unleashes them on society—quickly vanquishing his political enemy (Snowball) and rising immediately to power. The classes he teaches to the young launch him to the top of the elite upper class. Orwell’s books 1984 and Animal Farm are loaded with class symbolism—and deep commentary on the pros and cons of each symbol. One of the most important messages is the power of slogans. Each class has its own top slogans, and families within each socio-economic class tend to elevate such slogans to deep beliefs. PART TWO For example, in Animal Farm the working class adopts the following two slogans:

“I will work harder.” “The government is always right.”




In the modern United States, these slogans look more like:

1-“Work harder.” 2-One of the following (different people support each, and others not listed):

“The Republicans are always wrong.” “The Democrats are always wrong.” “Fox News is always right.” “MSNBC is always right.”

While political and religious views vary, the concept of “work harder” is an almost universal viewpoint among the working class. (The “working” class consists of the lower class, the lower-middle and the middle-middle classes; or, in financial terms, any household making less than $52,000 a year.) The upper-middle class, sometimes called the professional class (households making between $52,000 and $200,000 per annum), has its own, different, slogan:

“Attend and graduate from a top university.” Note, first of all, that the upper-middle class focus is on college, while the less-than-$52,000-a-year classes emphasize work. Second, where the other classes sloganize both work and also who to listen to in society (“______ are always wrong,” etc.), the professional classes usually don’t make political, media, or religious leanings part of their central slogans. They are content to focus on educational and career success. This is their defining trait. It tends to keep them—and their offspring—in the professional class. PART THREE In Animal Farm the pigs raise themselves into the upper class, the elites, by teaching themselves to read and write. It is education that gives them power. (Their slogan could easily be: “School class success leads to economic class status.”) When the lower classes are concerned that the pigs are usurping too many perks, wealth, and benefits for themselves, the elite-controlled “media” announces:

“You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike [the extra pay and benefits]. I dislike them myself….




We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organization of this [society] depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we [accept the extra pay and perks].”

This is the normal approach of the upper classes. “We need the better education and the higher pay, so we can lead the nation more effectively. It benefits YOU, because we make the nation better for you, even though such careers are very difficult for us. We are willing to sacrifice for YOU, however.” This is, in fact, the de facto slogan of the elite class: “Better for us means better for everyone.” We now have the top slogans for the three main socio-economic classes in America. Compare these closely. Really think about them. There is great meaning contained in these simple words:

• Working Classes “Work harder, and Republicans are always right.” Or, alternatively, “Work harder, and Democrats are always right.” (There are also a growing number of people in these classes whose slogan goes more like this: “Work harder, and all politicians are usually wrong.”)

• Professional Classes “Attend and graduate from a top university, then engage a successful career in your field.” Or, for many: “We’re working as hard as we can to save enough money for college for our kids.”

• Elite Power Classes “What is better for us is better for everyone—because we keep the world going.”

Which of these three do you most identify with? It’s a disturbing question for many people. Why? Because a lot of us don’t really want to resonate with any of these slogans. The first one is solid, but ineffective. The second is shallow and increasingly ineffective in the real world. And the third is smug and arrogant. We might feel a connection to one of them—most people do. But we’re usually not very proud of it. If you are proud of one of these slogans…then there you are. You know what you want. Otherwise, forcing yourself to admit which of the three most closely resembles your views will tell you what class you tend to identify with. It’s worth thinking about…




PART FOUR There is, of course, the other class. It’s not the lower, upper, or middle. Caste researches have called this “other” group everything from “Class X” to “the Entrepreneurial Class.” In the Middle Ages they were known as “merchants” or “yeomen.” Marx called them the bourgeoisie, and Jefferson saw in them the potential for a “natural aristocracy.” Steve Jobs referred to them as “the rebels and dreamers” and Malcolm Gladwell called them “outliers.” I like the term “Class X” best, because, while others each emphasize some part of this group, the “X” is vague enough to cover the whole class. What makes this group tick? They come from all socio-economic backgrounds—lower, upper, middle, or, if you prefer, working, managerial/professional, and elite. But they are defined by their out-of-the-box thinking. They don’t see themselves as part of any given class. They are individualists, innovators, and leaders. Here are some popular Class X slogans:

Think Win/Win My past is not my future My dream is _______ Let’s do this! Happiness leads to success (not vice versa) Follow your bliss Simple, not complex Be present Find your true calling in life and give your whole heart and soul to it Live in the flow Do it for you! (not to impress others) I was born to ______

The truth is, we don’t have to be defined by our “class” status. The American founding era rejected the European class system for a reason. We can define our lives by our character, love, and service—without reference to or even any thought about class divisions. And we should approach other people with this same attitude. In a very real sense, that’s Americanism. When we move beyond class labels, a host of possible slogans present themselves. For example: The sky’s the limit…




A Note From the Mentor To: Everyone Reading Animal Farm With Us From: Oliver DeMille RE: Examples of Media Clips that Mislead Hey, Everyone: Greetings! In the audio mentor prompt for Animal Farm, I’ve recommended that participants in Mentoring in the Classics look for and clip or print out at least 5 examples of media misleading, omitting, or fibbing. Since a rule of mentoring is not assign things you don’t do yourself, I just finished doing this assignment—and I thought it might be helpful to share these with you. Here are a few examples, just to help you get your juices flowing: 1. In the May/June 2016 edition of Foreign Affairs, the following quote appears (in fact, it is highlighted):

“Government has unique capacities that allow it to solve problems that markets can’t solve on their own.”

At face value, these words are true. No doubt about it: Government can do certain things that markets cannot. But this sentence is also misleading. Why? Because the “unique capacities” of government “that allow it solve problems that markets can’t solve” actually means one thing: force. Governments use force. Legal force, military force. They use sheriffs, marshals, deputies, police officers, jails, prisons, handcuffs, platoons, tanks, sergeants, captains, colonels, generals, admirals, marines, battleships, nuclear warheads (or the




threat of them), snipers, assassins, machine guns, smart bombs, drones targeted at a specific person, etc. etc. So, yes, in fact, governments do have “unique capacities” that markets usually do not. Furthermore, governments don’t arrest themselves when they use force, guns, F-22s, or guided missiles. They do, however, arrest private firms who use these things against people. And they should. I’m not suggesting private firms should be allowed to use these things. Not at all. But the way this sentence reads—and the rest of the article where it is found—leaves the impression that governments are somehow better at business than markets. This is misleading. Take away legalized force—assassination, invasion, bombing, missiles, etc.—and markets beat governments in business competition over and over. So just be honest and say so. Don’t cover what you mean by using terms like “unique capacities.” Just come right out and say “force, violence, and even killing—all legalized. And self-legalized by the same people who use the force.” Most readers won’t catch this real meaning, and I think the authors and editors know it. Or should. 2. In the same issue of Foreign Affairs, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew said that Obama’s policies have created “…the longest streak of uninterrupted private sector job growth in U.S. history…and the unemployment rate falling to 4.9 percent.”




It turns out that these statistics are accurate. However, what Lew fails to mention is how many of these jobs are part time, minimum wage, and how many of the people working in such jobs took major pay cuts from much better jobs. Also, while many middle-aged workers lost high-paying jobs with lots of benefits, even more young people got minimum-wage jobs with few or no benefits. In other words, while the words are accurate, they paint an overall picture that is entirely false. The economy didn’t get better. It got worse. Despite these tricky statistics. Oh, one more. Lew didn’t mention that the unemployment rate numbers don’t include people who have given up looking for a job. When full unemployment and underemployment numbers are included, the actual unemployment rate is more than three times the number Lew listed. Not a lie. But certainly misleading. Mark Twain was right about there being levels of lies: “Lies, d*** lies, and statistics.” 3. Lew also said, in the same article: “Between 2009 and 2015, the budget deficit declined from nearly 10 percent of GDP to 2.5 percent.” Again, the words are technically accurate, but fail to really tell the whole story. The deficit declined not because of frugal money management by the Administration, but by drastic increases in taxation. Is that really something to boast about? And if you do somehow think it is worthy of admiration, why not be transparent and openly share both sides of the issue? Why omit the actual reason that the deficit came down? 4. Here’s one from the March 2016 issue of The Atlantic. On page 90, it highlights the following quote:

“If Americans gave up meat one day a week, they would save an amount of water equivalent to the entire flow of the Colorado River each year.”

This quote is misleading in an opposite way from quotes 1, 2 and 3 above. Those above say something that is technically true but omit information that shows why their conclusions are incomplete. In contrast, quote #4 says something that isn’t even technically true.




Specifically, if Americans gave up meat one day a week, it would certainly impact the economy. Approximately 1/7 of the current meat consumption would dry up (although the exact percentage depends on which day of the week they didn’t eat meat, on whether or not each family chose the same day or not, and a number of other factors). But here’s the thing: there is no guarantee that the amount of money not spent buying or producing the 1/7 amount of meat would actually save water. To reiterate: Less money might be spent on meat, but there’s no way to accurately predict what people would do with that saved money and that it would definitely save water. Maybe they’d spend it on another food that requires just as much water to produce. Or some other product that requires even more water to manufacture. Besides, if people stopped eating meat once a week, wouldn’t many meat producers raise prices? Likely. If they did, then people would spend more than they do for 6 days of the week on meat anyway. We wouldn’t actually save 1/7. This might seem nerdy, or too technical, but if the media is going to report things—and assure us that they’re accurate—then they need to actually be accurate. Even more importantly, we need to notice when they’re not. 5. This one comes from a past cover of The Economist, where a map of the world is portrayed. Now, to be fair, it’s the same map we always see, the one named after the 16th century Flemish geographer Mercator. The problem is that this map is inaccurate. It’s an untruth, a myth, even though everyone accepts it as just “the way it is.” Mercator “massively distorted the scale of the extreme latitudes” near both the North and the South poles, as Parag Khanna put it in his book Connectography. What does this mean? Well, in the 16th century few ships needed maps of the extreme North and South, and since Mercator’s purpose in making maps was to improve navigation, he just distorted the very Northern and Southern parts of his map to make the rest of the map easier to read and more simple to produce. Result? Greenland and large swaths of Russia and Canada are a whole lot bigger in reality than they appear on the map. If the map were to scale, the continents would look drastically different. Not really a big problem, if you know this. But if you’re teaching your kids geography without this understanding you’re perpetuating a very incorrect view of the world.




Conclusion Have fun with this exercise in seeing how modern media skews the truth—and sometimes even purposely falsifies the news. Orwell wasn’t making things up: the “Preacher’s” of the modern media are still at work. Oh, and bonus question: Why did Orwell give the pig who symbolized the media industry the name “Squealer?” Seriously. He wasn’t a clergyman. He was the propagandist media. Have we adopted a modern religion of “The Truth Comes From The News” and “The Media Is Our Source of Truth?” This wasn’t a new idea in Orwell’s day. Nietzsche had already said that modernism is where people substitute the morning paper for their morning prayers. That’s deep. And Orwell certainly would have known this famous quote by Nietzsche. Animal Farm is full of symbolism. The more you look, the more you find. Enjoy looking for it! ~Oliver


Animal Farm by George Orwell - Thomas Jefferson Education

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