 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
Animal myths and fables are one of the most universal forms of storytelling in implied
literature. Before humans had written language, the stories that were passed down
through the generations were those of animals whose adventures in the world taught
basic values and mores to each succeeding generation of children. Indeed, man’s
obsession with his neighbor animals began even before storytelling, even before
language, when someone plucked a charred stick from a wood fire in a French cave and
drew the first stick buffalo on a wall.
Since that time, man has used animals to tell the story of what it means to be human.
Allegory allows stories depicting moral virtue and moral turpitude to be told in a way that
allows the reader to approach them free of judgment, and, in some cases, to shield the
writer from political or social ramifications that might occur when writing in a less open
society. Though many histories of Aesop exist, one of the most persistent is that he was a slave assigned to tutor
his master’s children, who employed his fables as a way of imparting a sense of right and wrong not only to his
young pupils, but to the master himself. C.S. Lewis used animals in the Chronicles of Narnia as a metaphor for
Christian values for two reasons: first, to make the lessons more accessible to young readers, but also because
he and his academic contemporaries were locked in a battle over the nature of language, particularly as it
pertained to morality and society. British academia was shifting away from strict Anglican religious teachings,
particularly with regard to the teaching of values to children, in the belief that being too didactic would lead to less
tolerance toward those outside the Church. Lewis cautioned that the reverse was true – that by not being didactic
enough, by refusing to give children a clear-cut lesson of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, children were being
denied a fundamental foundation on which they could build solid moral underpinnings, which he argued were
required for tolerance and compassion. Narnia was his means of using animal fable to state a clear moral premise
in a form that young readers could digest and incorporate in their own personal theology (Myers).
Not all allegory is so intentionally created, however. Aesop and Orwell clearly intended for readers to draw
parallels between their animal archetypes and human beings. L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz is considered a
seminal piece of children’s literature, in which the lessons are expressed as “there’s no place like home” and “if
you don’t obey the adults around you, you’ll end up doing hand to hand combat with an ugly crone in a bad hat.”
Fifty years later, though, a movement to decipher perceived symbolism that depicted the Populist ideology – that
the “little guy” should rise up and revolt against the oppressive, privileged elite – transformed its meaning for
people who chose to interpret it that way.
If the anthropomorphizing of animals to tell man’s story is as old as the cave paintings in France, then what makes
it such an enduring means to this end? It can be argued that using animal fable to tell the stories of human politics
and morality gives the author sufficient “cover” to be brutally honest in the writing, and allows the reader to be at a
sufficient distance to experience the story without applying judgments too quickly.
Two twentieth-century novels in particular represented the best examples of intentional and opportunistic allegory.
George Orwell’s Animal Farm: A Fairy Story and Richard Adams’ Watership Down capture the essence of the
animal fable, and yet each was created with a different objective in mind.
Intentional Allegory: Animal Farm: A Fairy Story
It begins, as perhaps all revolutions must, with a pig dream.
When Manor Farm’s thoughtless, feckless farmer/despot, Mr. Jones, staggers off to bed in a drunken stupor,
leaving his neglected animals unsecured for the night, they take the opportunity to convene a meeting in the
barn, where Old Major, the prize-winning boar of advanced age, relates a dream he’s had about a utopian world
where animals live unhindered and unsuppressed by humans, equal to and dependent upon each other and
every other living thing, and able to enjoy the fruits of their own labors. When Old Major dies a few days later, the
younger pigs mold his dream of a utopian world into a philosophy they call Animalism. They compose a stirring
animal anthem based on the Anglican hymn, “Beasts of England.” The others are quickly caught up in the idea of
such a world, and the plot to overthrow Mr. Jones begins to take shape.
Through a series of bold gestures and lucky breaks, Mr. Jones is run out of Manor Farm, and the animals are left
to work the farm their way, for their own benefit. After the initial euphoria of victory wears off, however, the farm
animals, who’ve spent their lives living in shackled subservience with no say in their lives, but also no
responsibility in living them, find themselves a little over their heads in this whole self-determination thing. The
pigs – Snowball and Napoleon, and Napoleon’s hanger-on, Squealer – are quickly ordained as the leaders, it
being assumed that pigs are the smartest and most qualified animals on the farm.
Immediately, the pigs create the Seven Commandments, which contains following dictates and prohibitions:
1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
7. All animals are equal. (Orwell 21)
Number 7 – all animals are equal – is declared by the animals to be the most important of the Commandments. By
the time the novel ends 103 pages later, these Commandments will be virtually unrecognizable. And the “most
important” commandment will finally read, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Though the events of the novella take their shape from the Russian Revolution, Orwell was expressing his
distaste for all totalitarian regimes (hence, the naming of the most notorious of his pigs in Animal Farm Napoleon).
In his twenties, Orwell and his wife, Eileen, traveled to Barcelona to join the fight with leftist Republicans against
Francisco Franco’s fascist dictatorship. The fascists were being funded by Hitler and Mussolini, the leftists by
Stalin and other socialist sympathizers. In that fight, Orwell and Stalin were on the same side, though largely
because Orwell, like most Europeans, considered Soviet socialism the lesser of the two evils. In truth, Orwell’s
sensibilities were much more aligned with the idealistic and creative Leon Trotsky, who was exiled shortly before
the Spanish Civil War (Brunsdale 12).
In Spain in 1938, Orwell realized that the Stalinists were no more interested in the liberation of the Spaniards than
the fascists were. Rather, both sides were interested mainly in advancing their political agendas – and lining their
own pockets – with little regard to improving the lot of the citizens. The reality of the Soviet Union, rather than its
initial promise, was deeply disillusioning for Orwell, which he related in non-allegorical prose in Homage to
Catalonia. It was an experience that predisposed him to confront tyrannical hypocrisy in print wherever he found
it. By the time World War II was winding down, Orwell watched with dismay as Joseph Stalin slowly began to evolve
into every bit the dictator-tyrant the Communists had accused Tsar Nicholas of having been. He noted that the
Stalinists had taken on many of the attributes in 1944 that they had criticized in their predecessors, imperialists –
hoarding the government’s wealth, allowing citizenry to live in squalor and mayhem while they took the best of
everything for themselves, and using violence to crush even the slightest hint of dissension.
Why, however, did Orwell feel that writing about animals was the best way to reveal the folly of human politics? In
1947, Orwell explained in the preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm:
For the past ten years or so I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we
wanted a revival of the Socialist movement. . . . I thought of exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily
understood by almost anyone and which could be easily translated into other languages. However the actual
details of the story did not come to me for some time until one day (I was then living in a small village) I saw a little
boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge cart-horse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It
struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that
men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.... I proceeded to analyze Marx’s
theory from the animals’ point of view. (Rose 57)
Orwell’s metaphorical farm animals allow the story to live in its own world, relatively free of individual political
ideology, in order that the reader might see the bigger picture underneath. By telling the story of how Napoleon
and the pigs overtake the farm and slowly metamorphose into exactly what they fought against (i.e., liquor-swilling,
clothes-wearing, bed-sleeping, bipedal tyrants), Orwell is able to lay out his experience of Stalin, a leader who
came to power amidst great hope, only to prove as cruel or crueler than the Tsar.
When he sat down to write about what he saw, he had a sense he’d step on some toes. The Soviet Union was an
ally, and the British people were far too busy fighting Nazis to consider whether one of the folks on our side was
acting in an unseemly fashion. Indeed, most Brits (and many Americans, for that matter) were still refusing to
believe that the Soviet Union was a socialist state. Orwell knew full well what he was doing. He wrote later that
Animal Farm “was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political
purpose and artistic purpose into one whole” (Pearce).
Still, Orwell was a bit surprised when he was rejected by several publishers. Frederic Warburg finally agreed to
publish the novel, over the objections of both the publishing house’s sales department and his own wife (who
threatened to leave him if he went ahead with publication on Orwell’s book). Eventually, Warburg was able to
make peace with the sales department and, presumably, his wife, as well. When the novel was published, in 1945,
it was so popular, the first printing of 4,500 books sold in only a few days. Orwell’s Animal Farm: A Fairy Story
would become one of the first literary salvos in the cultural front of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and
the Western world (Pearce).
Orwell takes his time depicting the unraveling of life at Animal Farm. Things start off with great promise – the pigs’
writing of the Seven Commandments on the tarred barn wall, the anthem, the appearance of democratic process
– but deteriorate slowly, almost imperceptibly (as in most oligarchies), when minor changes in the Commandments
and the rules of the farm begin to be made, first for clarification, then out of a desire to localize power with the
pigs. After Jones has been overthrown, the animals embark on an idyllic adventure, where they take joy in working
for what they believe is their own profit. Instead of a burden, work is a communal pleasure, with the purpose of
bettering the collective:
But everyone worked according to his capacity. The hens and ducks, for instance, saved five bushels of corn at
the harvest by gathering up the stray grains. Nobody stole, nobody grumbled over his rations, the quarrelling and
biting and jealousy which had been normal features of life in the old days had almost disappeared. (Orwell 25)
But as time passes, the pigs, Napoleon in particular, begin to slowly usurp the collective power, and with it, the
collective gain. They take over the tack room as a headquarters, with the argument that they need a place to
meet and organize. Napoleon takes two litters of puppies from their mothers, saying that it’s for the puppies’ own
good, as the super-intelligent pigs must take responsibility for the education of the young. Milk and food begin to
disappear, and later it becomes clear that the food has been given over to the pigs for their benefit, with the
explanation that preserving the pigs’ health was necessary to ensure the preservation of the collective’s
leadership. Squealer, the pig lackey that Napoleon and Snowball both use to do their dirty work, is sent to explain
the expropriation to the others as follows:
We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night,
we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples. Do you know
what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back! (Orwell 31)
The pigs go on to establish themselves as the leaders of the farm, taking the choicest windfalls, rearranging for
their own benefit the laws and edicts on which all the animals had agreed from the beginning. Orwell is careful to
temper the actions of the pigs with the inactions of the other animals. The other animals’ willingness to buy into
the pigs’ accounts of the Animal Farm’s goings-on, their unwillingness to express their unease as the pigs begin
doing business with neighboring humans, when they begin to violate the Commandments, when they
misappropriate and misuse the farm’s resources for their own benefit, and, finally, when they are prepared to kill
in order to benefit themselves. One by one, each of the Seven Commandments is altered, until, in the end, the
pigs have become no better than the farmer they overthrew. As time passes, as is true in most totalitarian
regimes, it becomes necessary for all dictators to protect their position using subterfuge and violence.
Even amongst the pigs, there is squabbling and disagreement. Napoleon becomes jealous of the more creative
and inventive Snowball, particularly when Snowball concocts a way that the animals can wire the farm for power
using a windmill. Worried that Snowball’s brilliant idea might boost his appeal among the other animals, Napoleon
sets the now-grown puppies (his personal “guard”) on Snowball, and they run him off the farm. He then has
Squealer, the propagandist pig, circulate false allegations against Snowball to tarnish his reputation with the other
animals. Later, he takes over the windmill project, and sets the animals to work on it, telling the animals that he
was the original architect of the plan, and Snowball had stolen it from him. The animals are told that the project is
for the betterment of the collective, and thus, in their best interests. They are also told that working on the windmill
is voluntary. But they are informed that the decision not to work on the windmill will cost them half of their daily
rations. This parallels the Soviet electrification project that Stalin instigated that became a huge drain on the
Soviet workforce, and ended up only benefiting Stalin and those in power.
The devolution of the Animal Farm back into Manor Farm (as the pigs end up renaming the farm) parallels the
collapse of the ideological Soviet Union into what would become its reality, a mere reflection of Tsarist Russia, with
different figureheads and a new name. The more powerful and autonomous the pigs become, the more corrupt
and self-serving they become, much as Stalin and his inner circle gradually degraded into the same pampered
decadence for which they had castigated the Tsar.
The passage of time works in favor of the pigs, as they are able to convince the other, less educated animals that
if there is any conflict with the current activities of the pig council and the original Seven Commandments, the
confusion can be blamed on the animals’ faulty memories or their inability to read well. The pigs utilize
propaganda and misinformation to distract the animals and keep them from dissenting, a time-tested political
strategy that might not seem so obvious if it weren’t being practiced by a pig.
Opportunistic Allegory: Watership Down
Richard Adams has always sworn diligently that his story about the travails of a group of displaced rabbits
searching to find a new home was never meant to be more than an entertaining story for his daughters, which
began on a long driving holiday through the British countryside. Published in 1972, Watership Down is the story
of a group of rabbits forced from their warren by a vision of forthcoming disaster. Their quest to find a new home
takes them through treacherous territory, where their kindness is rewarded with the friendship of a bird (a handy
thing to have for aerial reconnaissance), they find a warren which seems to be prospering, but turns out to be a
source of food for the local farmer, and finally find a new warren at Watership Down. A war ensues with a warren
already there, and our heroes are forced to defend their new home. Finally victorious over the invader rabbits,
the warren settles down and the rabbits live out their lives in harmony and peace.
Regardless of Adams’ original intent for the novel, Watership Down was published amidst a politically charged
atmosphere where every work of art, literature and cinema was being scrutinized for hidden political meaning. The
book was published in 1972, the same year that five men were caught rifling through the Democratic National
headquarters in the Watergate Building. Watership Down’s themes of leadership and defying authority for the
greater good struck a note with American readers. The obvious comparisons about defying craven and dishonest
authority figures, being courageous in the face of grave, unseen danger, and not allowing poor leadership to
undermine a bunny’s true moral character were drawn instantly by the mainstream media, despite Adams’ fervent
objections to these interpretations.
Adams’ true intention, if he is to be believed, was to write a children’s story about a group of rabbits that must flee
from their lifelong home, which no longer offers them the security they need to survive. The overriding themes of
Watership Down are those of courage, loyalty, truthfulness and the importance of home and belonging. These
were the values, Adams said, that he’d hoped to pass on to his target audience – first his young daughters, then
later, his school-aged readership. Still, whether or not Adams was consciously influenced by the political goings-
on in the late sixties and early seventies when he was writing the novel, the book does promote a pro-environment
philosophy. Man is the enemy, constantly moving in and causing the rabbits hardship, either by doing damage to
their warrens, or to the rabbits themselves, through ensnarement or rampant land development.
Adams makes the artistic choice in the book that the rabbits (unlike Orwell’s crop-harvesting, sign-painting,
windmill-building farm animals) will only do what rabbits generally do – hop, sleep, eat, flee, mate. The human
characteristics with which Adams imbues them are in their relationships with each other and in their individual gifts
and talents. Fiver is psychic, Hazel is a natural leader, Bigwig is physically strong, Holly is courageous. They are
all committed to finding or starting a new warren, so that they can get down to the business of simply being rabbits
again. They are, in effect, “natural rabbits” who merely seek to lead “natural” lives, and would, too, if it weren’t for
those pesky humans who mean nothing but trouble, no matter how initially amiable and helpful they may appear.
Adams also chooses to tell the story of the rabbits’ quest without glossing over the graphic bits in the least.
Rabbits are injured in cruel ways, they are killed unexpectedly and they are terrorized on a regular basis. For a
children’s book about bunnies, there is nothing soft and fuzzy about Watership Down. The language is
straightforward and adult, with little attempt to soft-pedal or “dumb down” for the kiddies. Many critics and literary
commentators pronounced the novel too adult to not be a political/environmental allegory. The publication history
of Watership Down seems to support this. First published by a tiny house (the now-defunct Rex Collins
Publishing), it was picked up by Penguin’s young readers division, then turned over to Macmillan for selling to the
adult reader market. When asked about his writing style and whether it was appropriate for children, Adams once
told an interviewer: “I do not, myself, recognise the distinction between publications for children and for adults….In
my view, the distinction may do more harm than good.” (Falconer 571).
This is what makes Watership Down an opportunistic allegory. Adams’ novel is, in the larger sense, a tale about
man’s inhumanity to rabbits (as well as rabbits “inhumanity” to each other) and to the world they both live in. Like
Aesop and, in a different way, Orwell, there is a moral to Adams’ story. Virtues like courage, loyalty and bravery
are ultimately rewarded, whereas sloth and indolence lead to a rabbit’s downfall.
Political Allegory: Keeping Your Head When Those Around You are Losing Theirs.
“Of the political situation I shall say little. I am terrified by now for fear the very paper may betray us. So
henceforward, if I have occasion to write to you at any length, I shall obscure my meanings with allegories” (qtd. in
Teskey 122).
The quote above was written in 59 BC, in a letter from Cicero to Atticus, shortly before the former fled Italy to
escape political persecution for speaking his mind outright. Cicero spoke out against Mark Antony and openly and
publicly backed his rival, Octavius, as the only rightful successor to Julius Caesar. When his words and actions
were thought to have gone too far, he was forced to flee Rome just as his arrest was imminent. It was then that he
swore to continue speaking his mind politically, but to do so in allegorical terms. Writing in metaphors allowed the
persecuted Cicero to express his ideas somewhat openly in his epistolary communications, while providing him
with enough literary cover to keep his head (literally, perhaps).
Political speech has never been easy, even in the most forgiving, democratized political environs. Provocative by
its very nature, political conversation invariably puts people on one side of an issue or the other. The hotter the
topic, the more divided the audience, and the more heated the rhetoric is likely to become, usually making rational
discourse an impossibility. Likewise, the discussion of social and cultural morality is a topic that can make anyone
defensive, regardless of which side of the fence they’re sitting on. Metaphor and allegory have served the
purpose throughout literary history of allowing writers who like to pontificate (and what writer doesn’t) to do so in
the least threatening way possible.
In the fables attributed to Aesop, the topics of morality and, to a lesser extent, politics are told through
anthropomorphic animals. In his essay, “Animal Stories,” from The International Companion Encyclopedia of
Children’s Literature, Simon Flynn notes that the reader’s ability to distance himself from the material enough to
take in the message, and his tendency to identify with animal protagonist and antagonist alike, worked together to
make the message of a particular animal fable more acceptable and relatable than a simple treatise on morality or
political ideology. Flynn points out that the combined effects of distance and identification could be particularly
useful with regard to children. The dangers and tragedies the rabbits face in Watership Down and their means of
overcoming and surviving them serve as a lesson in problem-solving and courage to children, without putting
them too directly into the story (by making a child the potential victim of the danger or sadness, for example).
Children are able to learn about things like death, loss and surviving calamity without actually having to
experience them (Flynn 419-420).
Watership Down was met almost immediately with literary interpretations about its relevance to environmentalism,
to the Vietnam War, even to the events affecting United States politics (though it is perhaps too long a stretch to
believe that a middle-class Brit from Hampshire really spent sleepless nights worrying about Richard Nixon’s
reelection hijinks in 1972). The themes of nature and conservation may be underlying in Adams’ novel because
they were concerns of Adams himself. Occasionally, allegory will be found years after the original publication of a
novel, perhaps where it doesn’t even exist.
When L. Frank Baum wrote The Wizard of Oz, in the late nineteenth century, populism – the political ideology that
espouses that the “little guy” needs to be protected from the big, bad, corrupt elite – was enjoying a resurgence in
Western Europe and the United States. While he never openly referred to himself as a “populist,” Baum was an
avid and outspoken proponent of the doctrine, a seventeenth-century idea that was rekindled in response to the
economic depression of the 1890s, which was largely blamed on corrupt, autocratic monopolies lorded over by
Gilded Age millionaires like the Vanderbilts and Andrew Carnegie. Baum never claimed that the Oz books were
any more than children’s fiction, and the books were accepted as such for more than a half century. In the late
fifties, early sixties, a history teacher named Henry M. Littlefield began using the characters in the book as a way
to teach world history to his grade school students. What started as an interesting way to showcase an
elementary school history curriculum developed a life of its own when Littlefield published his treatise, The Wizard
of Oz: Parable on Populism, in 1964 in American Quarterly that his theories began garnering national attention in
mainstream literary circles. Soon, everyone was jumping on the bandwagon, searching for the profound and
undeniable symbols in the Oz books. The Tin Woodsman represented the abused industrial worker, a virtual
slave to corporate interests, frozen in a binding state of perpetual servitude. The Scarecrow was the
sharecropper, dependent on the farmer for his existence (his stuffing, as it were). Dorothy was just a nice, slightly
disobedient “every-girl” from Kansas, forced to take on giant forces much more powerful than herself. The Wizard,
the overly grandiose megalomaniacal overlord, turns out to be nothing more than a paper tiger, “outted” by
Dorothy as a regular guy from Omaha, with few qualities to recommend him as a leader.
Whether Baum ever truly intended to tell this story is a purely a matter of speculation, since he died nearly fifty
years before such interpretations of his most famous work appeared in print. In fact, it is difficult to ascertain now
whether Littlefield himself even saw the Populist parallels in Baum’s stories initially, or whether he was simply
using them as a handy tool to help teach his curriculum, and then got swept up later in the recognition he
received for it. The fact that Littlefield’s argument seems so cogent on its face, though, would indicate that, while
Baum may not have intended to write an animal/creature fable setting out the principals of nineteenth-century
Populism, perhaps, like Adams’ protective feelings for nature, Baum’s political beliefs were transmitted in the story
nonetheless. It is one of the things that make The Wizard of Oz a classic example of opportunistic, rather than
intentional, allegory.
Flynn makes the point that the use of animal characters in both adult and children’s fiction serves to allow readers
to disengage from their positions as humans and the human world (including human priorities) enough to be able
to take a strong dose of medicine. The pro-environ message of Adams is easier to swallow if we see the humans
through the rabbits’ eyes. Flynn calls this “defamiliarization” (actually, he calls it “defamiliarisation,” because he’s
English and spells funny). But defamiliarization is also essential for George Orwell, who knew all too well the
dangers and potential costs of speaking openly about politics.
Unlike Adams, whose characters are more symbolic of particular qualities, rather than representative of actual
historical figures, Orwell makes no bones about who is who in Animal Farm. Napoleon is Stalin. Snowball is
Trotsky. Boxer, the draft horse, represents the dutiful, unquestioning, rather simple-minded proletariat. Old Major,
the pig whose dream started it all, is Karl Marx, the father of modern socialism, whose idealistic dream was great
in theory, but required more in practice than the revolutionaries were prepared to sacrifice.
Of all the characters that Orwell includes in his story to represent different aspects of a totalitarian regime gone
wrong, it is Squealer, the ersatz propaganda minister, who is the most universal, and perhaps, most essential to
the pigs’ continued hold on absolute power over the farm. It is Squealer’s job to make seem right all the wrongs
being done by the pigs, and this he does by the most common political tactic history has ever known. He uses –
or, rather, abuses – language to manipulate and obfuscate the facts and the history of the farm. When the
animals notice the changes in the Seven Commandments, Squealer carefully explains that they probably didn’t
read them right in the first place. When they are afraid and confused after Snowball’s exile and the dogs’ attack
on him, Squealer deftly constructs the story that Snowball was driven off for their own good, that he was evil and
bound to do the farm damage. He and Napoleon convince the animals that they are better off under the new
regime, that they are eating more, sleeping more, breeding more and working less, simply by telling them that it is
true, though these are, in fact, outright lies. In the end, it is Squealer who alters the entire focus of the collective
when he rewrites the most sacred of the Seven Commandments by adding, “...but some animals are more equal
than others.” This, for Orwell, represents the ultimate perversion of Marx’s fundamental doctrine that equal work
should mean equal compensation. It is the moment when the original dream for the true collective dies.
Orwell leaves the telling of this ending to Clover, the old draft mare that is one of the few remaining at the end of
the novel who remembers the revolution, who is forced to look on in sadness at the death of hope for a new kind
of society for the animals.
As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she could have spoken her thoughts, it would have
been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the
overthrow of the human race. These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on
that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion. If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had
been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity,
the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the last brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of
Major’s speech. (Orwell, 77-78)
Clover represents the wise-too-late proletariat that is not strong enough to fight the new regime, but sees it for
what it is, and mourns the dream that regime has destroyed through greed and arrogance.
In Watership Down, Adams uses the animals to represent qualities, rather than actual people. Hazel is the
embodiment of true leadership – a sturdy, brave, yet fallible leader who cares about his followers and takes on
the role of keeping them safe and finding them a new home. Fiver, the little psychic bunny, is seer, the teller of
truth. His foresight gives the rabbits a fighting chance to find a home before theirs is destroyed. Bigwig represents
brute strength and courage, tempered with justice and compassion. Woundwort is the villain, but not entirely
villainous. Like Bigwig, his physical strength and courage are to be admired. But Woundwort represents the flip
side of Bigwig – what strength and brute force looks like without the compassion and mercy. Woundwort is a
dictator, rather than a leader of rabbits.
The lesser characters represent complementary qualities of the main characters. When the rabbits happen
across a warren where everything seems to be too good to be true – plenty of food and water, seeming safety
against predators, an abundance of everything that makes a rabbit’s life good – they are suspicious to discover
that the provisions are being supplied by the nearby farmer. When the farmer’s motive becomes clear, our hero
rabbits attempt to warn the rabbits in the warren of the snares, and in particular, their appointed leader, Cowslip.
But their warnings are ignored. Cowslip represents the “anti-Hazel,” a weak, unmotivated figurehead who is
unable and unwilling to keep his warren safe from the farmer’s onslaught.
The use of the rabbits as his main characters not only allows for the freedom of the writer, but of the characters
as well. Since the odds are good that most readers of Watership Down have never actually been rabbits, Adams
has leeway to make the rabbits do or be anything he wants them to be. Even with his self-applied manifesto that
the rabbits shall only behave in a “rabbit-like” fashion and do “rabbit-like” things (save for the talking, of course),
Adams has a wide berth in terms of animal behavior and where he can take the story. He, like Tolkein in the Ring
trilogy, can invent his own rabbit language for conditions that are particular to rabbits. After the rabbits escape the
warren of the snares, their long journey over open field takes its toll on the travelers. Rabbits above ground,
unless they are in proved, familiar surroundings close to their holes, live in continual fear. If it grows intense
enough, they can become glazed and paralyzed by it – “tharn,” to use their own word (Adams 125).
So animal fable offers the benefits of fantasy without requiring Adams to construct an entire world that is
unfamiliar to his readers. The reader might not know what word a rabbit uses to describe the state of fear-induced
paralysis, but will most certainly be able to visualize a meadow in spring. This makes the novel more easily
believable.
The factor of believability in the animal fable is a complex issue. The mere fact that Orwell and Adams have
created animals who talk, think, conspire, trick and desire bends the boundaries of believability, based on the
generalities we know about actual animal behavior. The fact that Orwell has created a world where the farm
animals instantly get along – that “predators” (dogs and cats) seamlessly align themselves with little conflict with
the “prey” – stretches the limits of disbelief in the reader. In her book, The Orwell Mystique: A Study in Male
Ideology, Daphne Patai points out that there is a fine line between believable metaphor and unimaginable fantasy:
To be effective, an animal fable must maintain a delicate balance between the evocation of the animals’ human
characteristics and their recognizable animal traits. The reader must use both perspectives, the human and the
Animal, simultaneously, if the allegory is not to become ludicrous. (204)
Orwell’s Animal Farm works so well, perhaps, as an animal fable, because, while his animals are outlandish and
do outlandish things (like building windmills and harvesting crops by themselves), they are still animals who
engage in a sufficient amount of familiar animal behavior and display enough animal characteristics that the
reader remains convinced. The book also plays into everything that humans believe about animals – dogs are
loyal, pigs are smart but untrustworthy, horses are strong and stupid, etc.
Adams has less of challenge with regard to believability because of his devotion to keeping the rabbits rabbit-like.
He does give them a rich inner life that might be a bit hard to imagine of a rabbit, including their faith in a full-
blown religion and folk history that gets the rabbits through the worst times. But Adams keeps the religion “earth-
based” as one would imagine a rabbit might worship – if it occurred to one that they worship at all.
Commonalities
The history of using animals in allegorical settings to tell the story of human folly is as old as civilization. Almost all
cultures start their young off with animal tales that depict qualities that are valued in the culture itself. Jesus Christ
frequently used animals in his parables to illustrate the consequences of living outside of God’s instruction
(separating the flock into sheep and goats comes to mind).
Though Animal Farm and Watership Down approach animal fables from different angles in terms of allegorical
reference, the two stories share many themes in common. The first shared theme is leadership and power and
the potential abuse of both. In Animal Farm, the pigs become corrupted by their absolute control of everything on
the farm. What begins as a genuine desire on the part of the pigs to provide leadership of the collective quickly
descends into a morass of corruption and dishonesty because the temptations of power are too great for the pigs
to bear. In Watership Down, Hazel’s just and strong leadership of the rabbits on the run is contrasted first with the
non-leadership provided by Cowslip in the warren of the snares, and later with Woundwort, the tyrant who lords it
over Efrafa, the warren Hazel and the others must battle for control of Watership Down.
Another shared theme of both stories is that of complacency and a refusal to hold leaders accountable. The
animals on the farm allow Squealer to manipulate them and rewrite their history, though many of them lived
through the history the first time and simply refuse to trust their own memories. Their lack of trust in their own
memories, and their willingness to hand the reins of control over to the pigs because of their belief in the pigs’
superiority, leads directly to the collapse of Animal Farm back into Manor Farm of old. In Watership Down, a
similar theme is echoed in the story of the warren of the snares, where man makes the rabbits indolent,
complacent and lazy by providing them with all the food they need, so he can simply snare them when he wants to
eat them or skin them. The rabbits in the warren become willing participants in their own demise by lacking the
strength of character to question their leadership and choose a different life.
The use by the powers that be of fear to control the masses is another common thread in both novels. In Animal
Farm, the pigs initially use the threat of Mr. Jones, the farmer, to keep the animals in line. Squealer is constantly
telling them that if the pigs are not given certain privileges or granted certain comforts, and they cease to be able
to do their jobs, Mr. Jones will return to control the farm. Later, as the memory of Mr. Jones fades and a new fear
tactic is needed, Napoleon and Squealer use the now-exiled Snowball and his imagined evils as a way of scaring
the animals into submission.
In Watership Down, Woundwort uses his size and fierceness to frighten the warren of Efrafa into submission. By
the time Hazel and the others come into the picture, Efrafa is a sea of discontent and subverted unrest that
threatens to boil over at any moment. The rabbits of Efrafa are becoming discontented and harder for Woundwort
to control. When the injured Hazel makes a peace proposal to Woundwort, he points out that a softer, less fearful
approach to controlling the warren might make for an easier time of it.
At that moment, in the sunset on Watership Down, there was offered to General Woundwort the opportunity to
show whether he was really the leader of vision and genius which he believed himself to be, or whether he was no
more than tyrant with the courage and the cunning of a pirate. For one beat of his pulse the lame rabbit’s idea
shone clearly before him. He grasped it and realized what it meant. The next, he pushed it away from him. (Adams
421)
The final recurring theme in both stories is the interesting role that humans play with respect to the animal
characters. In both novels, humans are clearly a threat to the health and happiness of the animals and never to
be trusted. Even when they appear to be kind (as with the farmer who stocks food for the warren of snares in
Watership Down), there is bound to be a sinister motive and all care must be taken never to get too close.
In Animal Farm, the humans are initially driven off and banned as enemies (“Whatever goes on two legs is an
enemy”). The most human-like habits, such as the wearing of clothes, the drinking of alcohol and the sleeping in
beds, are also banned in Commandments. Slowly, though, in their greed, the pigs begin doing business with
humans on neighboring farms, ultimately playing the farmers off against one another and becoming enmeshed in
the drama they have created. More and more, the pigs dissolve into human activities, including the playing of
cards. As Orwell tells it, becoming human is the worst thing that can happen to an animal. By the end of the book,
as Clover and the other animals look into the window of the farmhouse on Napoleon and Squealer as they play
cards with the human farmers, they are unable to tell one from the other:
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces
of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but
already, it was impossible to say which was which. (Orwell 124)
Watership Down isn’t completely down on all humans. Adams did write the story initially for his daughter, so it is
not surprising that the only human who shows compassion for the rabbits is a small girl who finds the injured Hazel
being attacked by her cat, saves the rabbit from certain death, and finally releases him at the base of Watership
Down.
Besides those differences already detailed between the two novels, one noticeable variant between them is that
Watership Down has a spiritual, godly element that Animal Farm lacks. Because Adams has chosen to write about
wild rabbits being as like real wild rabbits as possible, it seems only natural that he’d give them a mythology and a
history. Throughout the book, he has scattered stories of a rabbit folk hero who epitomizes the qualities that all
good, virtuous rabbits should have – bravery, loyalty, quickness and a knack for trickery (for trickery is the key to
a rabbit’s survival against predators). The folktales that the rabbits convey to each other are meant to inspire and
drive them on spiritually, or to tell a story about whatever current dilemma they are facing, or merely to relate
historical information. Adams was constructing a world that did not just begin in Chapter One, but had begun long
ago, before any rabbit could actually remember.
However, in Animal Farm, outside of history that takes place over the course of the book, the animals have no
real relationship with the pre-revolutionary farm history. Their memories are nearly all limited to that of Jones’
cruelty and the sad, painful conditions that existed when he was in charge. Orwell seems to make a choice here
that the animals don’t really start to live until they make the decision to overthrow the farm. It makes sense, given
his depiction of the animals as being shallow and easily led. Yet it does make one wonder if the people the
animals are said to be representing – the Russians in the newly formed Soviet Union – were as similarly forgetful
about the history and memory of their past.
The use of animal fables to tell stories of courage, revolution, tyranny and consequences for bad acts is not new.
But these two novels, written fewer than forty years apart in the twentieth century, have taken the genre to
different ends. One, Orwell, intentionally set out to write an indicting tale of how absolute power corrupts
absolutely. The other, Adams, told a quest tale of how a handful of ordinary rabbits made an extraordinary
journey, surviving great danger by using nothing more than their wits, their cunning and their fortitude to make a
new home for themselves. The animal characters in both stories are seeking to be able to meet their basic
physical needs while finding some kind of self-determination. This is, ultimately, the struggle of all human beings,
as well.
his master’s children, who employed his fables as a way of imparting a sense of right and wrong not only to his
young pupils, but to the master himself. C.S. Lewis used animals in the Chronicles of Narnia as a metaphor for
Christian values for two reasons: first, to make the lessons more accessible to young readers, but also because
he and his academic contemporaries were locked in a battle over the nature of language, particularly as it
pertained to morality and society. British academia was shifting away from strict Anglican religious teachings,
particularly with regard to the teaching of values to children, in the belief that being too didactic would lead to less
tolerance toward those outside the Church. Lewis cautioned that the reverse was true – that by not being didactic
enough, by refusing to give children a clear-cut lesson of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, children were being
denied a fundamental foundation on which they could build solid moral underpinnings, which he argued were
required for tolerance and compassion. Narnia was his means of using animal fable to state a clear moral premise
in a form that young readers could digest and incorporate in their own personal theology (Myers).
Not all allegory is so intentionally created, however. Aesop and Orwell clearly intended for readers to draw
parallels between their animal archetypes and human beings. L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz is considered a
seminal piece of children’s literature, in which the lessons are expressed as “there’s no place like home” and “if
you don’t obey the adults around you, you’ll end up doing hand to hand combat with an ugly crone in a bad hat.”
Fifty years later, though, a movement to decipher perceived symbolism that depicted the Populist ideology – that
the “little guy” should rise up and revolt against the oppressive, privileged elite – transformed its meaning for
people who chose to interpret it that way.
If the anthropomorphizing of animals to tell man’s story is as old as the cave paintings in France, then what makes
it such an enduring means to this end? It can be argued that using animal fable to tell the stories of human politics
and morality gives the author sufficient “cover” to be brutally honest in the writing, and allows the reader to be at a
sufficient distance to experience the story without applying judgments too quickly.
Two twentieth-century novels in particular represented the best examples of intentional and opportunistic allegory.
George Orwell’s Animal Farm: A Fairy Story and Richard Adams’ Watership Down capture the essence of the
animal fable, and yet each was created with a different objective in mind.
Intentional Allegory: Animal Farm: A Fairy Story
It begins, as perhaps all revolutions must, with a pig dream.
When Manor Farm’s thoughtless, feckless farmer/despot, Mr. Jones, staggers off to bed in a drunken stupor,
leaving his neglected animals unsecured for the night, they take the opportunity to convene a meeting in the
barn, where Old Major, the prize-winning boar of advanced age, relates a dream he’s had about a utopian world
where animals live unhindered and unsuppressed by humans, equal to and dependent upon each other and
every other living thing, and able to enjoy the fruits of their own labors. When Old Major dies a few days later, the
younger pigs mold his dream of a utopian world into a philosophy they call Animalism. They compose a stirring
animal anthem based on the Anglican hymn, “Beasts of England.” The others are quickly caught up in the idea of
such a world, and the plot to overthrow Mr. Jones begins to take shape.
Through a series of bold gestures and lucky breaks, Mr. Jones is run out of Manor Farm, and the animals are left
to work the farm their way, for their own benefit. After the initial euphoria of victory wears off, however, the farm
animals, who’ve spent their lives living in shackled subservience with no say in their lives, but also no
responsibility in living them, find themselves a little over their heads in this whole self-determination thing. The
pigs – Snowball and Napoleon, and Napoleon’s hanger-on, Squealer – are quickly ordained as the leaders, it
being assumed that pigs are the smartest and most qualified animals on the farm.
Immediately, the pigs create the Seven Commandments, which contains following dictates and prohibitions:
1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
7. All animals are equal. (Orwell 21)
Number 7 – all animals are equal – is declared by the animals to be the most important of the Commandments. By
the time the novel ends 103 pages later, these Commandments will be virtually unrecognizable. And the “most
important” commandment will finally read, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Though the events of the novella take their shape from the Russian Revolution, Orwell was expressing his
distaste for all totalitarian regimes (hence, the naming of the most notorious of his pigs in Animal Farm Napoleon).
In his twenties, Orwell and his wife, Eileen, traveled to Barcelona to join the fight with leftist Republicans against
Francisco Franco’s fascist dictatorship. The fascists were being funded by Hitler and Mussolini, the leftists by
Stalin and other socialist sympathizers. In that fight, Orwell and Stalin were on the same side, though largely
because Orwell, like most Europeans, considered Soviet socialism the lesser of the two evils. In truth, Orwell’s
sensibilities were much more aligned with the idealistic and creative Leon Trotsky, who was exiled shortly before
the Spanish Civil War (Brunsdale 12).
In Spain in 1938, Orwell realized that the Stalinists were no more interested in the liberation of the Spaniards than
the fascists were. Rather, both sides were interested mainly in advancing their political agendas – and lining their
own pockets – with little regard to improving the lot of the citizens. The reality of the Soviet Union, rather than its
initial promise, was deeply disillusioning for Orwell, which he related in non-allegorical prose in Homage to
Catalonia. It was an experience that predisposed him to confront tyrannical hypocrisy in print wherever he found
it. By the time World War II was winding down, Orwell watched with dismay as Joseph Stalin slowly began to evolve
into every bit the dictator-tyrant the Communists had accused Tsar Nicholas of having been. He noted that the
Stalinists had taken on many of the attributes in 1944 that they had criticized in their predecessors, imperialists –
hoarding the government’s wealth, allowing citizenry to live in squalor and mayhem while they took the best of
everything for themselves, and using violence to crush even the slightest hint of dissension.
Why, however, did Orwell feel that writing about animals was the best way to reveal the folly of human politics? In
1947, Orwell explained in the preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm:
For the past ten years or so I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we
wanted a revival of the Socialist movement. . . . I thought of exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily
understood by almost anyone and which could be easily translated into other languages. However the actual
details of the story did not come to me for some time until one day (I was then living in a small village) I saw a little
boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge cart-horse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It
struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that
men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.... I proceeded to analyze Marx’s
theory from the animals’ point of view. (Rose 57)
Orwell’s metaphorical farm animals allow the story to live in its own world, relatively free of individual political
ideology, in order that the reader might see the bigger picture underneath. By telling the story of how Napoleon
and the pigs overtake the farm and slowly metamorphose into exactly what they fought against (i.e., liquor-swilling,
clothes-wearing, bed-sleeping, bipedal tyrants), Orwell is able to lay out his experience of Stalin, a leader who
came to power amidst great hope, only to prove as cruel or crueler than the Tsar.
When he sat down to write about what he saw, he had a sense he’d step on some toes. The Soviet Union was an
ally, and the British people were far too busy fighting Nazis to consider whether one of the folks on our side was
acting in an unseemly fashion. Indeed, most Brits (and many Americans, for that matter) were still refusing to
believe that the Soviet Union was a socialist state. Orwell knew full well what he was doing. He wrote later that
Animal Farm “was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political
purpose and artistic purpose into one whole” (Pearce).
Still, Orwell was a bit surprised when he was rejected by several publishers. Frederic Warburg finally agreed to
publish the novel, over the objections of both the publishing house’s sales department and his own wife (who
threatened to leave him if he went ahead with publication on Orwell’s book). Eventually, Warburg was able to
make peace with the sales department and, presumably, his wife, as well. When the novel was published, in 1945,
it was so popular, the first printing of 4,500 books sold in only a few days. Orwell’s Animal Farm: A Fairy Story
would become one of the first literary salvos in the cultural front of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and
the Western world (Pearce).
Orwell takes his time depicting the unraveling of life at Animal Farm. Things start off with great promise – the pigs’
writing of the Seven Commandments on the tarred barn wall, the anthem, the appearance of democratic process
– but deteriorate slowly, almost imperceptibly (as in most oligarchies), when minor changes in the Commandments
and the rules of the farm begin to be made, first for clarification, then out of a desire to localize power with the
pigs. After Jones has been overthrown, the animals embark on an idyllic adventure, where they take joy in working
for what they believe is their own profit. Instead of a burden, work is a communal pleasure, with the purpose of
bettering the collective:
But everyone worked according to his capacity. The hens and ducks, for instance, saved five bushels of corn at
the harvest by gathering up the stray grains. Nobody stole, nobody grumbled over his rations, the quarrelling and
biting and jealousy which had been normal features of life in the old days had almost disappeared. (Orwell 25)
But as time passes, the pigs, Napoleon in particular, begin to slowly usurp the collective power, and with it, the
collective gain. They take over the tack room as a headquarters, with the argument that they need a place to
meet and organize. Napoleon takes two litters of puppies from their mothers, saying that it’s for the puppies’ own
good, as the super-intelligent pigs must take responsibility for the education of the young. Milk and food begin to
disappear, and later it becomes clear that the food has been given over to the pigs for their benefit, with the
explanation that preserving the pigs’ health was necessary to ensure the preservation of the collective’s
leadership. Squealer, the pig lackey that Napoleon and Snowball both use to do their dirty work, is sent to explain
the expropriation to the others as follows:
We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night,
we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples. Do you know
what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back! (Orwell 31)
The pigs go on to establish themselves as the leaders of the farm, taking the choicest windfalls, rearranging for
their own benefit the laws and edicts on which all the animals had agreed from the beginning. Orwell is careful to
temper the actions of the pigs with the inactions of the other animals. The other animals’ willingness to buy into
the pigs’ accounts of the Animal Farm’s goings-on, their unwillingness to express their unease as the pigs begin
doing business with neighboring humans, when they begin to violate the Commandments, when they
misappropriate and misuse the farm’s resources for their own benefit, and, finally, when they are prepared to kill
in order to benefit themselves. One by one, each of the Seven Commandments is altered, until, in the end, the
pigs have become no better than the farmer they overthrew. As time passes, as is true in most totalitarian
regimes, it becomes necessary for all dictators to protect their position using subterfuge and violence.
Even amongst the pigs, there is squabbling and disagreement. Napoleon becomes jealous of the more creative
and inventive Snowball, particularly when Snowball concocts a way that the animals can wire the farm for power
using a windmill. Worried that Snowball’s brilliant idea might boost his appeal among the other animals, Napoleon
sets the now-grown puppies (his personal “guard”) on Snowball, and they run him off the farm. He then has
Squealer, the propagandist pig, circulate false allegations against Snowball to tarnish his reputation with the other
animals. Later, he takes over the windmill project, and sets the animals to work on it, telling the animals that he
was the original architect of the plan, and Snowball had stolen it from him. The animals are told that the project is
for the betterment of the collective, and thus, in their best interests. They are also told that working on the windmill
is voluntary. But they are informed that the decision not to work on the windmill will cost them half of their daily
rations. This parallels the Soviet electrification project that Stalin instigated that became a huge drain on the
Soviet workforce, and ended up only benefiting Stalin and those in power.
The devolution of the Animal Farm back into Manor Farm (as the pigs end up renaming the farm) parallels the
collapse of the ideological Soviet Union into what would become its reality, a mere reflection of Tsarist Russia, with
different figureheads and a new name. The more powerful and autonomous the pigs become, the more corrupt
and self-serving they become, much as Stalin and his inner circle gradually degraded into the same pampered
decadence for which they had castigated the Tsar.
The passage of time works in favor of the pigs, as they are able to convince the other, less educated animals that
if there is any conflict with the current activities of the pig council and the original Seven Commandments, the
confusion can be blamed on the animals’ faulty memories or their inability to read well. The pigs utilize
propaganda and misinformation to distract the animals and keep them from dissenting, a time-tested political
strategy that might not seem so obvious if it weren’t being practiced by a pig.
Opportunistic Allegory: Watership Down
Richard Adams has always sworn diligently that his story about the travails of a group of displaced rabbits
searching to find a new home was never meant to be more than an entertaining story for his daughters, which
began on a long driving holiday through the British countryside. Published in 1972, Watership Down is the story
of a group of rabbits forced from their warren by a vision of forthcoming disaster. Their quest to find a new home
takes them through treacherous territory, where their kindness is rewarded with the friendship of a bird (a handy
thing to have for aerial reconnaissance), they find a warren which seems to be prospering, but turns out to be a
source of food for the local farmer, and finally find a new warren at Watership Down. A war ensues with a warren
already there, and our heroes are forced to defend their new home. Finally victorious over the invader rabbits,
the warren settles down and the rabbits live out their lives in harmony and peace.
Regardless of Adams’ original intent for the novel, Watership Down was published amidst a politically charged
atmosphere where every work of art, literature and cinema was being scrutinized for hidden political meaning. The
book was published in 1972, the same year that five men were caught rifling through the Democratic National
headquarters in the Watergate Building. Watership Down’s themes of leadership and defying authority for the
greater good struck a note with American readers. The obvious comparisons about defying craven and dishonest
authority figures, being courageous in the face of grave, unseen danger, and not allowing poor leadership to
undermine a bunny’s true moral character were drawn instantly by the mainstream media, despite Adams’ fervent
objections to these interpretations.
Adams’ true intention, if he is to be believed, was to write a children’s story about a group of rabbits that must flee
from their lifelong home, which no longer offers them the security they need to survive. The overriding themes of
Watership Down are those of courage, loyalty, truthfulness and the importance of home and belonging. These
were the values, Adams said, that he’d hoped to pass on to his target audience – first his young daughters, then
later, his school-aged readership. Still, whether or not Adams was consciously influenced by the political goings-
on in the late sixties and early seventies when he was writing the novel, the book does promote a pro-environment
philosophy. Man is the enemy, constantly moving in and causing the rabbits hardship, either by doing damage to
their warrens, or to the rabbits themselves, through ensnarement or rampant land development.
Adams makes the artistic choice in the book that the rabbits (unlike Orwell’s crop-harvesting, sign-painting,
windmill-building farm animals) will only do what rabbits generally do – hop, sleep, eat, flee, mate. The human
characteristics with which Adams imbues them are in their relationships with each other and in their individual gifts
and talents. Fiver is psychic, Hazel is a natural leader, Bigwig is physically strong, Holly is courageous. They are
all committed to finding or starting a new warren, so that they can get down to the business of simply being rabbits
again. They are, in effect, “natural rabbits” who merely seek to lead “natural” lives, and would, too, if it weren’t for
those pesky humans who mean nothing but trouble, no matter how initially amiable and helpful they may appear.
Adams also chooses to tell the story of the rabbits’ quest without glossing over the graphic bits in the least.
Rabbits are injured in cruel ways, they are killed unexpectedly and they are terrorized on a regular basis. For a
children’s book about bunnies, there is nothing soft and fuzzy about Watership Down. The language is
straightforward and adult, with little attempt to soft-pedal or “dumb down” for the kiddies. Many critics and literary
commentators pronounced the novel too adult to not be a political/environmental allegory. The publication history
of Watership Down seems to support this. First published by a tiny house (the now-defunct Rex Collins
Publishing), it was picked up by Penguin’s young readers division, then turned over to Macmillan for selling to the
adult reader market. When asked about his writing style and whether it was appropriate for children, Adams once
told an interviewer: “I do not, myself, recognise the distinction between publications for children and for adults….In
my view, the distinction may do more harm than good.” (Falconer 571).
This is what makes Watership Down an opportunistic allegory. Adams’ novel is, in the larger sense, a tale about
man’s inhumanity to rabbits (as well as rabbits “inhumanity” to each other) and to the world they both live in. Like
Aesop and, in a different way, Orwell, there is a moral to Adams’ story. Virtues like courage, loyalty and bravery
are ultimately rewarded, whereas sloth and indolence lead to a rabbit’s downfall.
Political Allegory: Keeping Your Head When Those Around You are Losing Theirs.
“Of the political situation I shall say little. I am terrified by now for fear the very paper may betray us. So
henceforward, if I have occasion to write to you at any length, I shall obscure my meanings with allegories” (qtd. in
Teskey 122).
The quote above was written in 59 BC, in a letter from Cicero to Atticus, shortly before the former fled Italy to
escape political persecution for speaking his mind outright. Cicero spoke out against Mark Antony and openly and
publicly backed his rival, Octavius, as the only rightful successor to Julius Caesar. When his words and actions
were thought to have gone too far, he was forced to flee Rome just as his arrest was imminent. It was then that he
swore to continue speaking his mind politically, but to do so in allegorical terms. Writing in metaphors allowed the
persecuted Cicero to express his ideas somewhat openly in his epistolary communications, while providing him
with enough literary cover to keep his head (literally, perhaps).
Political speech has never been easy, even in the most forgiving, democratized political environs. Provocative by
its very nature, political conversation invariably puts people on one side of an issue or the other. The hotter the
topic, the more divided the audience, and the more heated the rhetoric is likely to become, usually making rational
discourse an impossibility. Likewise, the discussion of social and cultural morality is a topic that can make anyone
defensive, regardless of which side of the fence they’re sitting on. Metaphor and allegory have served the
purpose throughout literary history of allowing writers who like to pontificate (and what writer doesn’t) to do so in
the least threatening way possible.
In the fables attributed to Aesop, the topics of morality and, to a lesser extent, politics are told through
anthropomorphic animals. In his essay, “Animal Stories,” from The International Companion Encyclopedia of
Children’s Literature, Simon Flynn notes that the reader’s ability to distance himself from the material enough to
take in the message, and his tendency to identify with animal protagonist and antagonist alike, worked together to
make the message of a particular animal fable more acceptable and relatable than a simple treatise on morality or
political ideology. Flynn points out that the combined effects of distance and identification could be particularly
useful with regard to children. The dangers and tragedies the rabbits face in Watership Down and their means of
overcoming and surviving them serve as a lesson in problem-solving and courage to children, without putting
them too directly into the story (by making a child the potential victim of the danger or sadness, for example).
Children are able to learn about things like death, loss and surviving calamity without actually having to
experience them (Flynn 419-420).
Watership Down was met almost immediately with literary interpretations about its relevance to environmentalism,
to the Vietnam War, even to the events affecting United States politics (though it is perhaps too long a stretch to
believe that a middle-class Brit from Hampshire really spent sleepless nights worrying about Richard Nixon’s
reelection hijinks in 1972). The themes of nature and conservation may be underlying in Adams’ novel because
they were concerns of Adams himself. Occasionally, allegory will be found years after the original publication of a
novel, perhaps where it doesn’t even exist.
When L. Frank Baum wrote The Wizard of Oz, in the late nineteenth century, populism – the political ideology that
espouses that the “little guy” needs to be protected from the big, bad, corrupt elite – was enjoying a resurgence in
Western Europe and the United States. While he never openly referred to himself as a “populist,” Baum was an
avid and outspoken proponent of the doctrine, a seventeenth-century idea that was rekindled in response to the
economic depression of the 1890s, which was largely blamed on corrupt, autocratic monopolies lorded over by
Gilded Age millionaires like the Vanderbilts and Andrew Carnegie. Baum never claimed that the Oz books were
any more than children’s fiction, and the books were accepted as such for more than a half century. In the late
fifties, early sixties, a history teacher named Henry M. Littlefield began using the characters in the book as a way
to teach world history to his grade school students. What started as an interesting way to showcase an
elementary school history curriculum developed a life of its own when Littlefield published his treatise, The Wizard
of Oz: Parable on Populism, in 1964 in American Quarterly that his theories began garnering national attention in
mainstream literary circles. Soon, everyone was jumping on the bandwagon, searching for the profound and
undeniable symbols in the Oz books. The Tin Woodsman represented the abused industrial worker, a virtual
slave to corporate interests, frozen in a binding state of perpetual servitude. The Scarecrow was the
sharecropper, dependent on the farmer for his existence (his stuffing, as it were). Dorothy was just a nice, slightly
disobedient “every-girl” from Kansas, forced to take on giant forces much more powerful than herself. The Wizard,
the overly grandiose megalomaniacal overlord, turns out to be nothing more than a paper tiger, “outted” by
Dorothy as a regular guy from Omaha, with few qualities to recommend him as a leader.
Whether Baum ever truly intended to tell this story is a purely a matter of speculation, since he died nearly fifty
years before such interpretations of his most famous work appeared in print. In fact, it is difficult to ascertain now
whether Littlefield himself even saw the Populist parallels in Baum’s stories initially, or whether he was simply
using them as a handy tool to help teach his curriculum, and then got swept up later in the recognition he
received for it. The fact that Littlefield’s argument seems so cogent on its face, though, would indicate that, while
Baum may not have intended to write an animal/creature fable setting out the principals of nineteenth-century
Populism, perhaps, like Adams’ protective feelings for nature, Baum’s political beliefs were transmitted in the story
nonetheless. It is one of the things that make The Wizard of Oz a classic example of opportunistic, rather than
intentional, allegory.
Flynn makes the point that the use of animal characters in both adult and children’s fiction serves to allow readers
to disengage from their positions as humans and the human world (including human priorities) enough to be able
to take a strong dose of medicine. The pro-environ message of Adams is easier to swallow if we see the humans
through the rabbits’ eyes. Flynn calls this “defamiliarization” (actually, he calls it “defamiliarisation,” because he’s
English and spells funny). But defamiliarization is also essential for George Orwell, who knew all too well the
dangers and potential costs of speaking openly about politics.
Unlike Adams, whose characters are more symbolic of particular qualities, rather than representative of actual
historical figures, Orwell makes no bones about who is who in Animal Farm. Napoleon is Stalin. Snowball is
Trotsky. Boxer, the draft horse, represents the dutiful, unquestioning, rather simple-minded proletariat. Old Major,
the pig whose dream started it all, is Karl Marx, the father of modern socialism, whose idealistic dream was great
in theory, but required more in practice than the revolutionaries were prepared to sacrifice.
Of all the characters that Orwell includes in his story to represent different aspects of a totalitarian regime gone
wrong, it is Squealer, the ersatz propaganda minister, who is the most universal, and perhaps, most essential to
the pigs’ continued hold on absolute power over the farm. It is Squealer’s job to make seem right all the wrongs
being done by the pigs, and this he does by the most common political tactic history has ever known. He uses –
or, rather, abuses – language to manipulate and obfuscate the facts and the history of the farm. When the
animals notice the changes in the Seven Commandments, Squealer carefully explains that they probably didn’t
read them right in the first place. When they are afraid and confused after Snowball’s exile and the dogs’ attack
on him, Squealer deftly constructs the story that Snowball was driven off for their own good, that he was evil and
bound to do the farm damage. He and Napoleon convince the animals that they are better off under the new
regime, that they are eating more, sleeping more, breeding more and working less, simply by telling them that it is
true, though these are, in fact, outright lies. In the end, it is Squealer who alters the entire focus of the collective
when he rewrites the most sacred of the Seven Commandments by adding, “...but some animals are more equal
than others.” This, for Orwell, represents the ultimate perversion of Marx’s fundamental doctrine that equal work
should mean equal compensation. It is the moment when the original dream for the true collective dies.
Orwell leaves the telling of this ending to Clover, the old draft mare that is one of the few remaining at the end of
the novel who remembers the revolution, who is forced to look on in sadness at the death of hope for a new kind
of society for the animals.
As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she could have spoken her thoughts, it would have
been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the
overthrow of the human race. These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on
that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion. If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had
been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity,
the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the last brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of
Major’s speech. (Orwell, 77-78)
Clover represents the wise-too-late proletariat that is not strong enough to fight the new regime, but sees it for
what it is, and mourns the dream that regime has destroyed through greed and arrogance.
In Watership Down, Adams uses the animals to represent qualities, rather than actual people. Hazel is the
embodiment of true leadership – a sturdy, brave, yet fallible leader who cares about his followers and takes on
the role of keeping them safe and finding them a new home. Fiver, the little psychic bunny, is seer, the teller of
truth. His foresight gives the rabbits a fighting chance to find a home before theirs is destroyed. Bigwig represents
brute strength and courage, tempered with justice and compassion. Woundwort is the villain, but not entirely
villainous. Like Bigwig, his physical strength and courage are to be admired. But Woundwort represents the flip
side of Bigwig – what strength and brute force looks like without the compassion and mercy. Woundwort is a
dictator, rather than a leader of rabbits.
The lesser characters represent complementary qualities of the main characters. When the rabbits happen
across a warren where everything seems to be too good to be true – plenty of food and water, seeming safety
against predators, an abundance of everything that makes a rabbit’s life good – they are suspicious to discover
that the provisions are being supplied by the nearby farmer. When the farmer’s motive becomes clear, our hero
rabbits attempt to warn the rabbits in the warren of the snares, and in particular, their appointed leader, Cowslip.
But their warnings are ignored. Cowslip represents the “anti-Hazel,” a weak, unmotivated figurehead who is
unable and unwilling to keep his warren safe from the farmer’s onslaught.
The use of the rabbits as his main characters not only allows for the freedom of the writer, but of the characters
as well. Since the odds are good that most readers of Watership Down have never actually been rabbits, Adams
has leeway to make the rabbits do or be anything he wants them to be. Even with his self-applied manifesto that
the rabbits shall only behave in a “rabbit-like” fashion and do “rabbit-like” things (save for the talking, of course),
Adams has a wide berth in terms of animal behavior and where he can take the story. He, like Tolkein in the Ring
trilogy, can invent his own rabbit language for conditions that are particular to rabbits. After the rabbits escape the
warren of the snares, their long journey over open field takes its toll on the travelers. Rabbits above ground,
unless they are in proved, familiar surroundings close to their holes, live in continual fear. If it grows intense
enough, they can become glazed and paralyzed by it – “tharn,” to use their own word (Adams 125).
So animal fable offers the benefits of fantasy without requiring Adams to construct an entire world that is
unfamiliar to his readers. The reader might not know what word a rabbit uses to describe the state of fear-induced
paralysis, but will most certainly be able to visualize a meadow in spring. This makes the novel more easily
believable.
The factor of believability in the animal fable is a complex issue. The mere fact that Orwell and Adams have
created animals who talk, think, conspire, trick and desire bends the boundaries of believability, based on the
generalities we know about actual animal behavior. The fact that Orwell has created a world where the farm
animals instantly get along – that “predators” (dogs and cats) seamlessly align themselves with little conflict with
the “prey” – stretches the limits of disbelief in the reader. In her book, The Orwell Mystique: A Study in Male
Ideology, Daphne Patai points out that there is a fine line between believable metaphor and unimaginable fantasy:
To be effective, an animal fable must maintain a delicate balance between the evocation of the animals’ human
characteristics and their recognizable animal traits. The reader must use both perspectives, the human and the
Animal, simultaneously, if the allegory is not to become ludicrous. (204)
Orwell’s Animal Farm works so well, perhaps, as an animal fable, because, while his animals are outlandish and
do outlandish things (like building windmills and harvesting crops by themselves), they are still animals who
engage in a sufficient amount of familiar animal behavior and display enough animal characteristics that the
reader remains convinced. The book also plays into everything that humans believe about animals – dogs are
loyal, pigs are smart but untrustworthy, horses are strong and stupid, etc.
Adams has less of challenge with regard to believability because of his devotion to keeping the rabbits rabbit-like.
He does give them a rich inner life that might be a bit hard to imagine of a rabbit, including their faith in a full-
blown religion and folk history that gets the rabbits through the worst times. But Adams keeps the religion “earth-
based” as one would imagine a rabbit might worship – if it occurred to one that they worship at all.
Commonalities
The history of using animals in allegorical settings to tell the story of human folly is as old as civilization. Almost all
cultures start their young off with animal tales that depict qualities that are valued in the culture itself. Jesus Christ
frequently used animals in his parables to illustrate the consequences of living outside of God’s instruction
(separating the flock into sheep and goats comes to mind).
Though Animal Farm and Watership Down approach animal fables from different angles in terms of allegorical
reference, the two stories share many themes in common. The first shared theme is leadership and power and
the potential abuse of both. In Animal Farm, the pigs become corrupted by their absolute control of everything on
the farm. What begins as a genuine desire on the part of the pigs to provide leadership of the collective quickly
descends into a morass of corruption and dishonesty because the temptations of power are too great for the pigs
to bear. In Watership Down, Hazel’s just and strong leadership of the rabbits on the run is contrasted first with the
non-leadership provided by Cowslip in the warren of the snares, and later with Woundwort, the tyrant who lords it
over Efrafa, the warren Hazel and the others must battle for control of Watership Down.
Another shared theme of both stories is that of complacency and a refusal to hold leaders accountable. The
animals on the farm allow Squealer to manipulate them and rewrite their history, though many of them lived
through the history the first time and simply refuse to trust their own memories. Their lack of trust in their own
memories, and their willingness to hand the reins of control over to the pigs because of their belief in the pigs’
superiority, leads directly to the collapse of Animal Farm back into Manor Farm of old. In Watership Down, a
similar theme is echoed in the story of the warren of the snares, where man makes the rabbits indolent,
complacent and lazy by providing them with all the food they need, so he can simply snare them when he wants to
eat them or skin them. The rabbits in the warren become willing participants in their own demise by lacking the
strength of character to question their leadership and choose a different life.
The use by the powers that be of fear to control the masses is another common thread in both novels. In Animal
Farm, the pigs initially use the threat of Mr. Jones, the farmer, to keep the animals in line. Squealer is constantly
telling them that if the pigs are not given certain privileges or granted certain comforts, and they cease to be able
to do their jobs, Mr. Jones will return to control the farm. Later, as the memory of Mr. Jones fades and a new fear
tactic is needed, Napoleon and Squealer use the now-exiled Snowball and his imagined evils as a way of scaring
the animals into submission.
In Watership Down, Woundwort uses his size and fierceness to frighten the warren of Efrafa into submission. By
the time Hazel and the others come into the picture, Efrafa is a sea of discontent and subverted unrest that
threatens to boil over at any moment. The rabbits of Efrafa are becoming discontented and harder for Woundwort
to control. When the injured Hazel makes a peace proposal to Woundwort, he points out that a softer, less fearful
approach to controlling the warren might make for an easier time of it.
At that moment, in the sunset on Watership Down, there was offered to General Woundwort the opportunity to
show whether he was really the leader of vision and genius which he believed himself to be, or whether he was no
more than tyrant with the courage and the cunning of a pirate. For one beat of his pulse the lame rabbit’s idea
shone clearly before him. He grasped it and realized what it meant. The next, he pushed it away from him. (Adams
421)
The final recurring theme in both stories is the interesting role that humans play with respect to the animal
characters. In both novels, humans are clearly a threat to the health and happiness of the animals and never to
be trusted. Even when they appear to be kind (as with the farmer who stocks food for the warren of snares in
Watership Down), there is bound to be a sinister motive and all care must be taken never to get too close.
In Animal Farm, the humans are initially driven off and banned as enemies (“Whatever goes on two legs is an
enemy”). The most human-like habits, such as the wearing of clothes, the drinking of alcohol and the sleeping in
beds, are also banned in Commandments. Slowly, though, in their greed, the pigs begin doing business with
humans on neighboring farms, ultimately playing the farmers off against one another and becoming enmeshed in
the drama they have created. More and more, the pigs dissolve into human activities, including the playing of
cards. As Orwell tells it, becoming human is the worst thing that can happen to an animal. By the end of the book,
as Clover and the other animals look into the window of the farmhouse on Napoleon and Squealer as they play
cards with the human farmers, they are unable to tell one from the other:
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces
of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but
already, it was impossible to say which was which. (Orwell 124)
Watership Down isn’t completely down on all humans. Adams did write the story initially for his daughter, so it is
not surprising that the only human who shows compassion for the rabbits is a small girl who finds the injured Hazel
being attacked by her cat, saves the rabbit from certain death, and finally releases him at the base of Watership
Down.
Besides those differences already detailed between the two novels, one noticeable variant between them is that
Watership Down has a spiritual, godly element that Animal Farm lacks. Because Adams has chosen to write about
wild rabbits being as like real wild rabbits as possible, it seems only natural that he’d give them a mythology and a
history. Throughout the book, he has scattered stories of a rabbit folk hero who epitomizes the qualities that all
good, virtuous rabbits should have – bravery, loyalty, quickness and a knack for trickery (for trickery is the key to
a rabbit’s survival against predators). The folktales that the rabbits convey to each other are meant to inspire and
drive them on spiritually, or to tell a story about whatever current dilemma they are facing, or merely to relate
historical information. Adams was constructing a world that did not just begin in Chapter One, but had begun long
ago, before any rabbit could actually remember.
However, in Animal Farm, outside of history that takes place over the course of the book, the animals have no
real relationship with the pre-revolutionary farm history. Their memories are nearly all limited to that of Jones’
cruelty and the sad, painful conditions that existed when he was in charge. Orwell seems to make a choice here
that the animals don’t really start to live until they make the decision to overthrow the farm. It makes sense, given
his depiction of the animals as being shallow and easily led. Yet it does make one wonder if the people the
animals are said to be representing – the Russians in the newly formed Soviet Union – were as similarly forgetful
about the history and memory of their past.
The use of animal fables to tell stories of courage, revolution, tyranny and consequences for bad acts is not new.
But these two novels, written fewer than forty years apart in the twentieth century, have taken the genre to
different ends. One, Orwell, intentionally set out to write an indicting tale of how absolute power corrupts
absolutely. The other, Adams, told a quest tale of how a handful of ordinary rabbits made an extraordinary
journey, surviving great danger by using nothing more than their wits, their cunning and their fortitude to make a
new home for themselves. The animal characters in both stories are seeking to be able to meet their basic
physical needs while finding some kind of self-determination. This is, ultimately, the struggle of all human beings,
as well.
| The Political Animal: The Political Allegory of George Orwell and Richard Adams By Amanda Sowards |
All files © Copyright 2008 The Sylvan Echo