Fairy Tale In George Orwell's Animal Farm

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When what is now just known as Animal Farm was first published, it was under the name Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. Then a year after publication, in 1946, publishers in the United States removed the last part to just read, more plainly, Animal Farm. However, the question still stands, 69 years later. Is Animal Farm by George Orwell a fairy tale? To be a fairy tale, the story has to fit a criteria. A fairy tale has a hero, a moral message and overcoming evil, plus more. Although Animal Farm does have some of the essentials of a fairy tale, it is not one. Animal Farm does have characteristics of fairy tales, such as a moral message, obstacles, set during hard times, a rule to follow and the leaving of a leader. Simply, “power corrupts” is the …show more content…
There is no magic, happily ever after, fighting back against the bad guys, or victory. A very defining component of fairy tales is the essence of magic. In this story, there are the talking animals, but they are just a metaphor for the general population of Russia during Stalin’s reign. Otherwise there is no magic, such as a magical item or character. The ending of fairy tales is one that it happy, where the hero prevails and all is well, and the very last line might be “and they all lived happily ever after”. Animal Farm ends quite the antipodal. It is bleak, with no sense of hope or optimism. Before the happy ending of fairy tales, the lead of the story fights back against the villains, and is followed with a victory. The animals do all fight against the humans and are victorious with driving them out of the farm, but the true villains are the pigs, who invite humans back into the farm. The rest of the animals never know that the pigs are tyrants and that they should fight against the pigs. Because the animals never fight against them, or even know that they should, there is no possibility of …show more content…
Most prominently are the characters. Fairy tales have a certain cast that is the good guys, the bad guys, and the supporting characters who might give the main hero a gift to help them, or give the hero the task of stopping the villain. There is no real hero in Animal Farm. All the animals that are not pigs or dogs are not as terrible, but they are not stopping the pigs like the hero would do if it were a fairy tales. They don’t even know that the pigs are corrupt or that they should the pigs from ruling over them. If it would to be said that there are evil characters in Animal Farm, it would be the pigs. The pigs are corrupt with power in the end. It might be arguable that the pigs might have been doing what they thought would be best for the farm as a whole, a few times, and not just themselves. As for the bad guys, that character is prominent in both fairy tales and Animal Farm, although they are a somewhat different. As for the supporting characters that there are fairy tales, that isn’t really in Animal Farm. It could be said that Old Major and Benjamin are the characters that give the task and help the hero along the way to stopping the villain. However they do not have the same role that the supporting characters do in fairy tales.

Even though aspects that make something a fairy tale are in Animal Farm, it still isn't one. Any book will have some of the characteristics

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