It’s easy to forget that George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a chillingly forensic examination of the architectures of authoritarianism, maybe because the animals are cute. It wasn’t written for children but it does have the thrust and power of the fairytale, so that kids can understand its cataclysmic message even if much of the allegory is lost.
But allegory is Orwell’s central game here, and any adaptation of the work needs to wrestle with the events of the Russian revolution and its subsequent slide into despotism before it refracts, transposes or updates the story for contemporary audiences. We can never be allowed to forget that the events Orwell warns us about really happened, not to animals on a farm but to an entire people. If we don’t, we’re doomed to repeat it.
