 Hello and welcome to this summary video of an animal farm. Now I made this video for two reasons. The first is some of you students have been following the entire course, beginning with an introduction that we did, the very detailed introduction that we did to the novella itself, as well as the chapter by chapter reading of the entire novella. Now what this video is really useful for is bringing everything together so that you can see how in a snapshot it all fits in when you're thinking about the plot, different themes, characters and so on. However the second reason why I made this video is for some students who might be coming across this and they don't necessarily have the luxury of time to go through all the course as well as go through every single chapter by chapter reading. More specifically if you are on really time to pressure and you just need a real snapshot of what to remember, what are the key quotations to remember and then you can dive straight into the exam practice questions then you've come to the right video. So let's get started with a brief summary and overview of what happens in the plot of this novella. So just to recap, firstly the novella starts with old major calling a secret meeting so he's the boar, he's the one who really is the patriarch of the entire farm and at this time it's called known as manifold. So he calls a meeting of all the animals and he basically explains his principles of animalism, this idea that he feels that Mr. Jones essentially the farmer who is really responsible, the animals if they are clever and if they are organised essentially they can overthrow him and establish a perfect society which is totally run by animals and all animals should treat each other equally and essentially establish a new farm. Then old major passes away after he passes on these principles of animalism and essentially soon after a rebellion starts where the animals underfed and really angry and they've had enough with Mr. Jones and his very irresponsible farmers they essentially rebel and kick them off and the first farm run by animals is established and it's renamed animal farm so it's now an independent farm. Then essentially they use old major speech as inspiration for the seven commandments that they create which they paint and they create and they put up on a board and Mr. Jones's home is used as this monument of the evils of humans and it's basically essentially a museum to remind all the animals of what they've escaped from wasn't it really terrible that you know the humans used to oppress us however a new sense of freedom is found through these seven principles and essentially these seven commandments go to the heart of it that animals are all equal. Now essentially the pigs slowly by slowly start to take advantage so we learn that the group of pigs that live on the farm are the most intelligent out of all of the creatures and essentially at first things start to go missing apples so some luxuries like apples and milk start to go missing but also these pigs have a massive advantage over all the other animals because they can read and write fluently while some of the animals such as boxer for instance can only barely hold four letters of the alphabet in their mind so the pigs really because of this superior intelligence and education begin to slowly take advantage of this and in particular the two pigs who essentially emerge as the leaders so the first is snowball who is the really articulate one he's able to really move all of the animals in terms of how passionate he is we find that he's really passionate about teaching all of the animals the principles of animalism then we've got another more surly pig napoleon he's much more strong he's perhaps the quieter of the two not as intelligent as snowball but is a bit more cunning and he does steal four puppies who somehow disappear during this euphoria of the rebellion and we don't know what happens to these puppies however they begin to rebuild the farm but the order which is established is threatened in the battle of the cowshed essentially the humans and of course mr. jones are really threatened by these animals what this might do to other farms which are nearby so essentially mr. jones tries to take back animal farm and the animals successfully beat him off then essentially napoleon and snowball they have been having this complete power struggle between the two so as i've mentioned before snowball is the more intellectual of the two and he comes up with this idea of the animals becoming self-sufficient independent by creating a windmill because this windmill not only will it generate power but actually it's going to make life much easier for all of the animals on the farm because they're going to have essentially machines doing all of the hard labor and the animals can even take more time off however napoleon because he doesn't necessarily agree with anything that snowball says because he wants to reassert himself he completely goes against the windmill however this power struggle comes to a head and one night these puppies which had disappeared resurface as big dogs and they essentially a napoleon's protection and they chase snowball off the farm and essentially napoleon takes over as leader and essentially dictator of these animals and funny enough because he sees the intelligence in what snowball believed with the windmill he gets all the animals working really hard on reconstructing the windmill so suddenly he wants this windmill to be reconstructed however he also relies on another pig called squeela who's really really intelligent and quite cunning he's the one that looks after manipulating information and manipulating propaganda and using some of the facts and changing them and twisting them in order to make the animals believe that napoleon number one is really clever but also number two if napoleon changes his policies actually his policies were always the same so squeela is the person who looks after propaganda and he's very clever and very good with his words now essentially there's then the battle of the windmill now there's another farmer called frederick but also another farmer called pilkington and frederick in particular deceives napoleon so napoleon starts trade with the humans again even if this goes against the principles and the commandments however uh frederick deceives him he gives him money which turns out to be fake and then there's essentially a war where napoleon or rather frederick and his men come in and they destroy the windmill this is the windmill that the animals have been rationing food for they've been working day and night for especially boxer one of the horses who's the most powerful but also the most loyal to napoleon and most loyal to the principles of animalism this windmill was completely destroyed so even if the animals are victorious and frederick and his men are chased off the farm actually the work becomes even harder and the years pass and the years pass and by this stage boxer who initially at the beginning of animal farm was really young very sturdy and very powerful as a horse actually becomes older and older and even if his main inspiration is just to see that the windmill happen and maybe to retire because all animals are promised a decent retirement this never happens because boxer falls ill from age and collapses and unbeknownst to all of the animals essentially napoleon has arranged for him to be taken to the knackers in other words he's been chart charted off to where the humans basically kill horses and use them for meat and this is in exchange for whiskey because napoleon develops a taste for alcohol and he also the pigs start to move in to mr. jones's home and they start to enjoy the luxuries and there's now a growing divide between how the pigs are treated and even the piglets so the children are even educated versus the vast majority of animals who basically are treated like workers like peasants and even their animals so all the older animals at the beginning of the realm begin to die off and the younger animals who don't know any better don't realize that squealer is also changing some of these commandments and establishing basically an unequal animal farm again and ultimately how this novella ends is when the big pigs become like humans but actually they are worse than humans they have a meeting with all of the farmers where they agree that they will not have any more problems with each other you have pilcanton who's present you have frederick who's present you have the lawyer who's a human being and essentially they even start walking on the hind legs so if you remember at the beginning of animal farm it's four legs good two legs bad however these commandments are completely changed to the point where some animals it's written are more equal than others so these social divisions back in with the animals the worst thing is that it's animals who are oppressing each other rather than human beings oppressing each other now in terms of the genre of this novella it is an allegory it's all well's way of using creatures such as these animals to represent other human beings and of course in this case he was using and we're going to touch on context but he was using the characters of the animals to show how the principles of communism are corrupted and how especially in the USSR and in Russia they were corrupted by Stalin who became the leader and by the end Russia basically was a capitalist country helped with all its equalities and in many ways it was even worse than some capitalist countries like america now in terms of context the first contextual point you need to be aware of when you think about animal farm is the russian revolution now prior to 1917 Russia used to be a monarchy it used to be a capitalist economy and it was run by the czars that's spelled tsar now the final soul was killed in 1917 when there was a revolution and essentially the bolsheviks again bolshevik is spelled b-o-l-s-h-e-v-i-k they took over and established the principles of communism and this leads to the second contextual factor this is to do with Karl Marx now Karl Marx was an intellectual in the 1800s he was from Germany and he articulated the principles of communism communism essentially is the idea that in order to create an equal society all resources and all things like private property should be in the hands of the state and it's down to the state to equally allocate all of resources to all different individuals and essentially he believed that the capitalist system this is a system that a majority of countries today run on which is to do with private enterprise that basically selling things for a profit and that profit and private property belongs to individuals rather than to the state this should be abolished in order that social structures such as social divides between people you know the rich and the poor that will therefore be eliminated if the state owns everything and the ideal that communism basically uh aspires to is that the state will equally allocate everything to everybody and everyone will be equal but of course in practice when we look at the case of the USSR this did not work and actually things at some points were actually worse than living in the capitalist economy now the other contextual factor of course to be aware of and this is in relation to snowball and Napoleon is the power struggle that occurred after the civil war when the Bolshevik revolution took place and this was a power struggle that happened within the Bolshevik party between Joseph Stalin and Trotsky now on the one hand Trotsky was the intellectual he was highly committed to communist principles however Joseph Stalin was the much more cunning man he was the one who essentially did and maneuvered the system and he maneuvered through the communist party and not only did he went out in this power struggle he ultimately had Trotsky assassinated and this is important contextually when you're thinking about snowball and Napoleon and much later on when things were getting much harder in Russia Stalin would often use Trotsky as a really convenient excuse to put forward to the Russian population that things are happening because Trotsky and his men and all of these traitors causing it to happen the final contextual factor to be aware of this is to do with the other farmers are to do with Chamberlain who was the leader of Britain between the interwar years so this is between 1918 at the end of the first world war and 1939 this is just before the beginning of the second world war he was leader of Britain and he represents Pilkington one of the farmers and of course Hitler who was a leader of Germany from 1933 all the way of course to the end of the second world war in 1945 he represents Frederick and of course this is important when you think about the allegory and how essentially both Chamberlain and Hitler of course believed in capitalist principles but ultimately they started working closely with the USSR and especially in the second world war when Hitler of course was the enemy Chamberlain and the USSR worked together to try and defeat Hitler now let's quickly talk about things before we talk about finally quotations remember if you're answering exam questions on animal farms of course when it comes to the theme the first of course is to do with class now class is really important the main and founding principle of communism was to eliminate classes eliminate this difference between what Karl Marx called the bourgeoisie this is the upper class individuals versus the peasants this is the proletariat that Karl Marx called them now what animal farm is essentially showing is that there's always a tendency amongst human beings to somehow divide themselves even in supposedly an equal communist society there's still emerged the divisions between the elite communists the people who were in Stalin's inner circle and of course when you think about the animals the people who were then Napoleon's inner circle such as squealer versus the vast majority of peasants and of course these were in animal farm boxer clover all the animals that were not pigs versus of course when you think about communist Russia all the majority of russians who actually lived a terrible life so there's always going to be irrespective of the principles that our country has run on there's always this tendency amongst us as human beings to divide ourselves and to create some form of inequality so that's the first thing the second thing is that to do with education and the importance of education now the pigs were able to manipulate all the other animals and of course also contextually in Russia Stalin and his propaganda machine was able to manipulate the vast majority of russians because they simply lacked an educational system which they could independently think for themselves and of course Orwell's main message is that we need to all be equally educated in in order to be able to question our leadership when they do things that are sneaky so of course if the other animals remembered the seven commandments they would realize that it was squealer who was changing them to suit what the pigs wanted so the importance of education is another key important message that's highlighted through this theme now the final thing is that to do with power and control and of course Napoleon was very hungry for power and of course power can really be corrupting of people and of animals and in this case the principles of animalism were ultimately destroyed through Napoleon as he tightened his grip over power on animal farm and of course the same can be said for the russian revolution and when we look at Stalin he actually killed so many russians more russians in the second world war killed them and so of course this desire for power and this desire for control is an innate and inbuilt human desire and this needs to be tempered we can only temper it if we live in a democracy as opposed to a dictatorship now the final thing of course to remember is to do with quotations so let's quickly run through all the important quotations and discuss why these are important to remember now the first quotation to remember is when old major when he calls all the animals before he dies he says our lives are short and of course this is tied into the principle of animalism and of course contextually this ties into the idea of communism and the best way to improve people's lives was through the principle of communism this idea that if we have equality in resources our lives will be much better now of course this is completely destroyed much later in the novella however old major does articulate this principle really really clearly the other key quotation at the beginning after the rebellion occurs is when the animals essentially learn that all men are enemies and of course this is in contrast to the end when the animals not only the pigs are they walking on the hind legs like men they are eating like men they are living in mr jones's house the other key quotation is to do with snowball and he's described as snowball's eloquence in other words his ability to talk his ability to be able to convince people with convincing arguments this is one of the characteristics and the attributes that really make him such a threat to napoleon and so this is really really powerful and this of course is in contrast to how napoleon essentially uses force to convince other people and boxer continuously always reminds himself and this is another quote napoleon is always right the other key quotation is to do with squealer squealer will talk with tears of napoleon's wisdom again this highlights the propaganda the machine of controlling information that napoleon effectively created around him and he used squealer as a way to convince all the other animals that everything he was doing was for their benefit even if of course the only person that benefited all the only animals that benefited were the pigs the other key quotations remember and this is the most famous quotation from the novella is all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others and of course this really shows the degradation and the destruction of the principle of animalism and this is what makes this novella so haunting so that's it for this revision and I hope you found this useful thank you so much for listening