Irony and Satire

The political message of Orwell's story relies very heavily on the irony created by its limited point of view. Irony results when there is a disjunction between what an audience would expect and what really happens. Orwell uses a particular type of irony--dramatic irony. He relies on the difference between what the animals understand and what we, the audience, can conclude about the situation at Animal Farm. We know just what the animals know, but we can see so much more of its significance than they can. For example, when Squealer announces that Napoleon is dying, we know that he is just hung over. And when the pigs have a drunken bash soon after Boxer is taken away, we know that the pigs have used the money they got by selling him to the horse slaughterer to buy whiskey. The conclusions we reach that the animals never quite get to--that the pigs are decadent, corrupt, and immoral--are all the more powerful because we arrive at them ourselves, without the narrator pointing these things out directly.

Orwell uses dramatic irony to create a particularly subtle satire. Satire stages a critique of an individual, group, or idea by exaggerating faults and revealing hypocrisies. The dramatic irony of Animal Farm achieves this aim indirectly. We see the hypocrisy that the animals don't and therefore understand in this backward fashion that the book is deeply critical of the pigs.

TNT's ANIMAL FARM uses the same technique, but relies on it much less for political satire. First of all, since the point of view is less limited, the greed and treachery of pigs and humans is depicted directly and the satire is immediate and clear. Second, the animals in TNT's version do eventually begin to see that the pigs' behavior is wrong. This plot line limits the necessity for irony and moves the entire production more in the direction of straight-forward satire.

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