Despite their sometimes dark settings, his works are very accessible, which has made him popular among those not usually comfortable with more intellectual fiction. But his works do discuss serious themes and contain a specific focus, making them valid pieces of literature and not just popular fiction. Animal Farm is Orwell s most widely read novel, in part, because of its cartoonish characters and easily interpreted allegorical themes. It tells the story of the revolution of the animals living on Manor Farm. A pig named Napoleon rises to become the totalitarian leader of the farm, which is renamed Animal Farm, after the lazy, alcoholic farmer is run off.
Animal farm is an allegory for the October Revolution and Stalin s regime in Russia.
Napoleon the Pig, representing Stalin, gradually tears down the precepts upon which Animal Farm has been founded and eventually returns the farm to a condition almost worse than before, with the pigs whipping, killing, and starving the other animals. The humans in 1984 exist in much the same state as Orwell left the animals in Animal Farm. They are defeated, scared, and completely subservient to their totalitarian dictator. 1984 is Orwell s vision of the state of the future, a state existing under the rule of Big Brother in the year 1984. The novel focuses on the life of Winston Smith.