Animal Farm
George Orwell · 1945 · Paper 2 Section A
Context
Published in 1945, the novella is an allegory of the Russian Revolution and Stalin's betrayal of socialist ideals. Orwell, a democratic socialist disillusioned by Soviet totalitarianism, wrote it to expose how revolutions can be hijacked by those who seek power for its own sake. The fable form makes its political critique accessible while the final line — 'impossible to say which was which' — warns that all unchecked power systems converge.