Allegorical Reification in George Orwell’s Animal Farm: Text and Contexts

Abstract

In the novella Animal Farm (1945), George Orwell uses allegory in tandem with satire to create an intricate textual tapestry populated by regular farmyard animals engaged in ludicrous warfare. Although indicated only obliquely, the historical canvas that provides context to the rather deceptive foreground is an important point of focus. The chimeric fabric of text in Animal Farm intertwines inextricable threads of history and fantasy, complicating attempts to interpret the narrative and problematizing the overall reading. The reader is required to deeply inquire into the historical allusions embedded into a different discourse; this is not only to infer political references in terms of historical figures and events but also to speculate about the significance placed on these allusions because of the use of heavy symbolism in the surface text. A close reading of the text along with a contextual investigation complemented by discourse analysis is the key to developing a comprehensive understanding of Orwell’s fable, which is the potential novelty factor of this study. This study is informed by critical theory and guided especially by the idea of “political unconscious” proposed by Fredric Jameson (1981).