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What does the commandment “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” show in Animal Farm?

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George Orwell, c. 1940 — George Orwell Known best for his powerful anti-utopian novels *Animal Farm* (1945) and *Nineteen Eighty-four* (1949), English author George Orwell came to be regarded as a prophetic voice in 20th-century literature.

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the amended commandment “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” serves as a chilling illustration of how power can corrupt and how revolutionary ideals can be betrayed.12

Originally, the animals established an egalitarian society based on the founding principle that all animals are equal. However, as the pigs—the farm’s intelligent and power-loving leaders—subvert the revolution, they consolidate control and establish a dictatorship. The modification of this commandment highlights the hypocrisy of the pigs, who justify their preferential treatment and oppressive rule by creating a hierarchy that contradicts the very revolution they led.1324

Ultimately, the phrase exposes the transition from a society intended to be free of human exploitation to one where the pigs become indistinguishable from their former human masters, proving that one system of oppression can easily be replaced by another.142