Though from 80 years ago, Animal Farm explores age-old themes of the corruption of power where a revolution goes full circle back to where it started. For as the sayings go, “Welcome to your new masters, same as the old masters” and “as more things change, the more things stay the same.”

“Animal Farm” explores themes of the corruption of a revolution so that it appears as if nothing has changed. The story is an allegory for the Bolshevik Revolution, turned on its head however with the revolution taking place with talking Animals rebelling against their dictator-ish owner, Farmer Pilkington. It shows how, though the names and titles change, it stays the same. 

While it is true that the allegories are as obvious as red from blue, it still explores complex themes that the revolution which liberated the animals fell into terror, dictatorship, and purges. 

It is a classic and deserves that title though brief and obvious. Starting with an idea of taking life, to glory, to labor, to betrayal, to the new bosses. All that can be said is the book’s final line about the pigs who took power from humans, “it was impossible to say which was which.”