Animal Farm Summary

The One-Sentence Version

A farm revolution that begins with a dream of equality ends with the pigs indistinguishable from the humans they overthrew - a perfect allegory for how power corrupts every ideology that touches it.

The Core Idea

George Orwell wrote Animal Farm in 1944 as a direct allegory of the Soviet revolution and the rise of Stalinism, but its relevance has never been limited to that moment. The story follows a group of farm animals who expel their human owner and attempt to build a society based on equality. What follows is a precise and devastating account of how revolutionary idealism collapses from within - not because the original goals were wrong, but because the structure of power attracts exactly the kind of people who will betray those goals.

The pigs, led by Napoleon, do not start as villains. They start as the most capable administrators of the revolution. The corruption is gradual and each step seems justified by necessity. By the end, the pigs walk on two legs, sleep in beds, drink alcohol, and trade with humans - everything the original revolution was supposed to end. The animals who remember the early days cannot quite articulate what went wrong. That confusion is the point. Orwell shows that totalitarianism does not announce itself. It rewrites history as it goes.