What Does Napoleon Symbolize In Animal Farm

When thinking about Animal Farm, one of the most prominent and main characters of the story is Napoleon. Napoleon is a pig and in their society, pigs are the most intelligent and are basically at the top of the ladder and the other animals often depended on their cleverness. As the story goes, “Sometimes the work was hard; the implements had been designed for human beings and not for animals, and it was a great drawback that no animal was able to use any tool that involved standing on his hind legs. But the pigs were so clever that they could think of a way round every difficulty” (Orwell 45). Out of all the pigs, Napoleon is particularly clever and opportunistic. In the story, Napoleon symbolizes the evil dictator/tyrant that brainwashes his subjects and manipulates them into thinking a certain way, and he does this through force. He trains nine dogs as his security guards and uses them to intimidate the others and force them into listening to him. He uses death as punishment to anyone that speaks or does anything against him and what he wants. “When they had finished their confession, the dogs promptly tore their throats out,

The way both of them came into power are similar, through force and manipulation, and the way they maintained power was also similar, through continuous force and manipulation. However, Napoleon does not only symbolize Stalin, but rather the generic tyrant that we’ve heard of. A modern day comparison could be Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea. Kim Jong-un rules North Korea through brainwashing them into believing that he is the superior power and can do no bad. Napoleon is very similar in that, although sometimes he is questioned, he uses propaganda and persuasion tactics to brainwash his subjects into thinking that he is doing everything for the good of the people and not for himself, which is the