Key Quote
“"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig... but already it was impossible to say which was which"”
Narrator · Chapter 10 (Final Line)
Focus: “impossible to say which was which”
The novel's devastating final image — the pigs and humans becoming indistinguishable — completes the revolution's tragedy: the oppressed have become the oppressors, identical to those they replaced.
Technique 1 — CHIASMUS / VISUAL TRANSFORMATION
The chiasmus — 'pig to man, and from man to pig' — creates a pattern of REVERSAL: A-B-B-A. This crossing structure mirrors the crossing of identities: pigs become men, men become pigs. The rhetorical figure PERFORMS what it describes — the words swap places just as the characters swap roles. The chiasmus creates a visual and rhythmic sense of transformation happening before the reader's eyes.
The phrase 'impossible to say which was which' does not merely note resemblance but IDENTITY COLLAPSE: the two categories (pig/man, revolutionary/oppressor) have merged. This is more radical than saying 'the pigs resembled men' — Orwell says they are INDISTINGUISHABLE. The word 'impossible' makes the collapse total: even a deliberate effort to differentiate cannot succeed.
Key Words
RAD — REGRESS
The novel's final image completes the regression to a state WORSE than the beginning: before the revolution, at least the animals knew their enemies (humans). Now, the enemy wears their own face. The regression is circular — back to oppression — but ALSO degenerative, because the new oppression is camouflaged by revolutionary rhetoric. The revolution has not merely failed; it has produced a MORE insidious form of the original tyranny.
Key Words
Technique 2 — PERSPECTIVE — 'THE CREATURES OUTSIDE'
The final scene is witnessed from outside the farmhouse, through the window — the animals observe the pigs dining with men from the position of excluded outsiders. This perspective is deliberately chosen: the ordinary animals are now separated from their leaders by glass, architecture, and social distance. The window functions as a class barrier — transparent but impenetrable.
The word 'creatures' — used for the observing animals — is dehumanising (or de-animalising): they are not named, not individualised, but reduced to generic 'creatures.' This linguistic demotion mirrors their political demotion: they have been returned to the status of nameless beasts, exactly where they started before the revolution. Even the narrative voice has absorbed the hierarchy.
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Context (AO3)
THE TEHRAN CONFERENCE
The image of pigs and men dining together alludes to the Tehran Conference (1943), where Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt — communist and capitalist leaders cooperating despite ideological opposition. Orwell saw this as confirmation that the Soviet leadership had abandoned revolutionary principles in favour of power politics.
CYCLICAL HISTORY
Orwell's ending supports a cyclical view of history: revolutions do not produce progress but repetition. Each new ruling class eventually resembles the one it replaced. This pessimistic view challenges the Marxist belief in historical progress through revolution.
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WOW — THE IRON LAW OF OLIGARCHY (Michels)
Robert Michels's Iron Law of Oligarchy — the theory that ALL organisations, no matter how democratic, eventually become ruled by a small elite — is *Animal Farm*'s deep structural argument. Michels argued that leadership inevitably concentrates power: leaders develop expertise, control information, and become indispensable, gradually transforming democratic organisations into oligarchies (rule by the few). Orwell dramatises this 'iron law': the revolution begins with genuine collective decision-making (the animals vote, debate, and share power) but inevitably concentrates power in the pigs, who have the education, intelligence, and rhetorical skill to dominate. The final image — pigs indistinguishable from men — is Michels's iron law made visible: the revolutionary leaders have become a new oligarchy, structurally identical to the old one. Michels would argue that this is not a failure of the specific revolution but an inherent feature of ALL organised power. Revolutions change the personnel of the elite but not the STRUCTURE of elite rule.
Key Words