Let me take a step back for a moment. You don’t need to understand anything about history to read Animal Farm, but you do need to understand something about human desire, tendency and greed. In 2018, the presence of these ideals in our country and in the world is not hard to notice. In other words, almost any reader can benefit from this story.

Animal Farm is not only a brilliant, simplistic recreation of Stalinist Russia. It also tells an eerily similar story to that of every dictator’s rise to power and to the political upset in the United States today.

The story centers around a farm of impressionable animals, instructed by two ambitious pigs (the most prominent of which is Napoleon) to overthrow their human superiors and run the farm for themselves. Over time, the farm develops into more of a labor camp than a chosen home, and this becomes bluntly obvious to the reader. Nevertheless, the animals are consistently content and complacent with the increasingly dehumanizing changes Napoleon makes to the farm. After all, he is in charge.

While it is important to respect authority, Orwell shows that there is a difference between honor and ignorance. The animals, in blindly obeying Napoleon’s orders, see no good in return. There is no benefit to their hard work, and eventually, there is loss.

“ ‘Bravery is not enough, said Squealer. ‘Loyalty and obedience are more important.’ ”

At the beginning of the novel, commandments are set in place to signify the animal’s joint ownership of the farm. In just a few years, the commandments have been changed and manipulated to benefit Napoleon, yet the animals remain unaware because (as expected of farm animals) they don’t know how to read.

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

It’s impossible to fight every battle. Despite what every social justice warrior may fight for, there is always something that is not being said. That in its truest form is how Napoleon took over Animal Farm, how Stalin took over Russia and how hatred may take over this country. You can accomplish even the worst of crimes if no one is aware that you are committing them.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”