Animal Farm

Mr. Jones of Manor Farm is too drunk to secure the hen-houses for the night. As he sleeps, the livestock gather in the big barn to hear old Major, a prize boar, share a vision of a world without human masters. Prompted by this dream, the animals rebel, drive Jones from the property, and claim the land for themselves.

They draft a code of laws based on absolute equality and pool their labor for the harvest. But as the seasons turn, the pigs, asserting intellectual authority, begin to alter the rules. Rations are adjusted, dissent is met with violence, and the original revolutionary slogans are steadily rewritten to justify a new dictatorship.

George Orwell published this allegorical novella in 1945 as a direct satire of the Russian Revolution. It functions as a structural model of totalitarianism, detailing how propaganda and the consolidation of power dismantle an egalitarian society.