Benjamin (Animal Farm)
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Benjamin is a donkey in George Orwell's novel Animal Farm.[1] He is also the oldest of all the animals (he is alive in the last scene of the novel). He is less straightforward than most characters in the novel, and a number of interpretations have been put forward to which social class he represents as regards to the Russian revolution and the soviet union. (Animal Farm is an allegory for the evolution of Communism in Russia, with each animal representing a different social class, e.g Boxer represents the working class)
Interpretations
Film
In the 1954 film, it is Benjamin who leads the other animals in a counter-revolution against Napoleon when his treatment of them finally goes too far, although the 1999 film simply features him fleeing the farm with some of the other animals when their treatment under Napoleon's regime becomes too harsh to endure any longer. (neither events occur in the book)
References
- ^ Orwell, George (1946). Animal Farm. New York: The New American Library. p. 40.