Fables and Allegories

1
Fables and Allegories

• An Introduction to Animal Farm

2
What do you know?

• What do you know or remember about fables?
• Have you ever heard of an allegory before?
• What is satire?

3
The Ant and the Grasshoppera Fable
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Aesop

• Probably the most well known writer of fables is
  Aesop, who lived in Ancient Greece.
• He wrote The Ant and the Grasshopper and lots
  of other fables still popular today.

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Quotations from Aesop

• Dont cry over spilt milk.
• Dont count your chickens before theyve hatched.
• Beware the wolf in sheeps clothing.
• Appearances are often deceiving.
• Birds of a feather flock together.
• Slow and steady wins the race.

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Fable

• Fables are very short
• Fables feature nonhuman characters who have been
  personified to an extreme
• such as animals, plants, inanimate objects,
  mythical creatures, or forces of nature who
  think, talk, act, fight, disobey, and obey
• Fables end with a short moral lesson

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The Ant and the Grasshopper is a Fable!

• It is very short
• The animal characters talk, sing, think, plan,
  and feel
• It teaches a moral or lesson it is best to
  prepare for days of need.

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Allegory

• Allegories are forms of extended metaphors, which
  continue throughout the whole text
• An allegory is a piece of artwork in which
  every part has at least two meanings
• the literal meaning
• and an abstract or symbolic meaning
• The underlying meaning of an allegory has social,
  religious, or political significance

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The Ant and the Grasshopper is an Allegory, too!

• Literal Meaning Symbolic Meaning
• The Ant
• Corn
• The Grasshopper
• Summer
• Winter

Hardworking People
Work / Preparation
Short-sighted People
Opportunity Time
Hard Times
10
Satire

• Ridicules people, practices, governments, or
  institutions in order to reveal their weaknesses
  and provoke improvement
• Uses wit, ridicule, irony, sarcasm, parody,
  reversal, and hyperbole
• Reader must be careful to pay attention to hints
  and clues of the reality of the situation beyond
  the façade of a seemingly innocent story

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• Animal Farm is all 3 a fable, an allegory, and
  satire!

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Animal Farm as a Fable

• Has animals sheep, horses, cows, pigs, chickens,
  ravens, dogs, donkeys, ducks
• Teaches many lessons
• A perfect society is only as perfect as the
  members that make it up.
• No society will ever have real equality as long
  as some people take advantage of others.
• Dont always believe what you hear and see.
• Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

13
Animal Farm as an Allegory

• Literal Symbolic
• Manor Farm Russia
• Animals Revolution Russian Revolution
• Animalism Communism
• Old Major Karl Marx
• Napoleon Joseph Stalin
• Snowball Leo Trotsky
• Squealer Russian Propaganda and Media
• Pigs Communists
• Horses Workers
• Windmill Stalins 5 year improvement plan
• Dogs KGB or police

14
Animal Farm as Satire

• It ridicules society and those who try to make
  society better through the implementation of
  ideas
• It ridicules Joseph Stalins reign of power
• It parodies with wit Stalin and his government as
  evil pigs (literally and figuratively)
• It shows reversal in that people can be animals
  in the way that they treat, exploit, and
  manipulate each other for their own gain
• It exaggerates how a lack of literacy, reading,
  and education makes people easy targets for
  tyrants, dictators, and those who would use
  propaganda to manipulate the masses
• It shows how rhetoric, the art of persuasive
  writing and speaking, and propaganda are more
  important to maintaining power than goodness,
  competence, fairness, and other virtues