Old Major

Old Major can be compared with Karl Marx, the founder of Communism.

Despite the fact that he dies at the end of chapter one, Old Major is arguably the most important character in the book. His ideas and the power of his personality form the catalyst for the Rebellion and without him, it would not happen in the way that it did.

Orwell describes him as ‘a majestic looking pig with a wise and benevolent appearance in spite of the fact that his tushes had never been cut.’

He is well loved and respected by the animals which can possibly be seen by the fact that the animals do not use the name given to him by Jones but call him ‘Old Major’ and by the fact that ‘everybody was quite ready to lose an hour's sleep to hear what he had to say.’

In the opening chapter he gathers the animals together to tell them of a dream he has had but first tells them he is going to die soon and wants to pass on his wisdom.

He is a powerful orator and delivers a powerful emotive speech.

He tells the animals how miserable a life the animals of England live. He uses emotive language referring to being ‘forced to work to the last atom of our strength’ and ‘slaughtered with hideous cruelty’ and goes on to conclude that all their problems are down to humans. Remove humans and ‘the root cause for hunger and overwork is abolished forever’.

Old Major reinforces his ideas through repetition and telling in graphic terms how horrific the end of their lives is going to be and once again blaming humans for all their troubles.

He concludes urging them to overthrow the human race and once they have done this they should not take up their vices. ‘No animal must ever live in a house or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes or drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco, or touch money or engage in trade.’

He says the most important thing to remember is that they are all equal and no animal shall tyrannise or kill another.

The reader must question why he considers it necessary to warn the animals against taking up human vices and ask why he cannot describe his dream of life when humans are gone. Perhaps he knows that things will be no better under animal rule.

Like Communism, as an ideology, Old Major’s speech is filled with flaws and contradictions:

• If he feels passionately about his beliefs why wait until he is dying to pass on his wisdom? Why not lead the rebellion? Can it be that he does not want this comfortable life disturbing?
• If ‘the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty’, then how has Old Major had ‘a long life’.
• If the animals are ‘given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies’ then why is Old Major described as ‘rather stout’?
• His ideas are naïve and simplistic; they are the ideas of a thinker rather than a doer.

At the end of his speech Old Major teaches the animals a song he remembers from his youth. ‘Beasts of England’ is a pastiche of ‘The Internationale’ a song adopted by the Communists after the Russian Revolution. But just like in Animal Farm, the Internationale was written to commemorate an earlier workers’ uprising, the Paris Commune of 1871 when the working people of Paris seized the city and replaced the capitalist state with their own government.

When Old Major dies peacefully in his sleep, he is buried in the orchard by Jones which surely demonstrates Jones’ love for Old Major and is a further contradiction of Old Major’s prediction of ‘no animal escapes the cruel knife in the end’.

Orwell’s Old Major represents Karl Marx who was a great thinker and philosopher and like Old Major he died before his ideas were used by revolutionaries around the world.