Characters

Most of the important characters in Animal Farm by George Orwell are anthropomorphised animals. Some of the animals are individually named and play specific roles, while others are described as groups and become collective characters.

There are also a few human characters, though they are only relevant for how they relate to the animals and their society.

The main characters of the story are Napoleon, Snowball, Squealer, Boxer and Benjamin. We will begin this section by looking at these five characters in detail.

Afterwards, we will briefly describe some of the secondary animal characters, such as Old Major, Clover, Mollie and Moses. We will also look at a few of the human characters, such as Mr. Jones, Mr. Frederick and Mr. Pilkington, and discuss the roles they play in the story.

Note that Animal Farm is a fable that works as a political allegory. This means that most of the characters are meant to symbolize specific people or groups of people from real life. You can read more about what or whom each character is meant to symbolise in the Allegory section.