Political Allegory in Animal Dystopias of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Laline Paull’s The Bees

Abstract

Two dystopian works, George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Laline Paull’s The Bees allegorise different breeds of animals to criticise and satirise two different political systems, namely the totalitarian oligarchy and the conservative, oligarchic monarchy, and their negative outcomes such as repression, injustice, and inequality among the animal characters in the novels. The author of Animal Farm, George Orwell directly criticises Stalin and his repressive regime in the USSR through a set of farm animals in his novel. He builds analogies between the historical and political figures in the USSR and his human and non-human animal characters to satirise socialism in the Soviet Union. He also presents two types of oligarchies in his novel, which are warring oligarchy and sultanic oligarchy. Whereas Orwell demonstrates the warring oligarchy among human chararacters such as Mr. Jones, Mr. Pilkington, and Mr. Frederick, he presents how a sultanic oligarchy and Napoleon’s totalitarian rule are formed on Animal Farm due to the pigs’ exploitation of the farm animals in his Animal Farm. Unlike Orwell, Laline Paull does not satirise a certain historical period in her novel, The Bees. Even though Paull does not criticise a certain historical period, her work harbours several political themes, events, and allusions such as regicide, massacre, and war that are allegorised through a bee colony. Paull’s totalitarian bee hive, which is composed of upper and lower social classes such as the Queen, Sister Sages, and Floras, is ruled by a conservative, oligarchic monarchy. This political system not only represses the bees, but also causes injustice and inequality among them. Whereas the Sages occupy the ruling positions due to their superior kin, the other bees form the underprivileged class owing to their inferior kin in the hive’s totalitarian regime. Consequently, this thesis claims that creating dystopian environments, Orwell’s classical dystopia, Animal Farm and Laline Paull’s critical dystopia, The Bees illustrate political allegories observed in the political systems, social classes, and the political events they present.