Although not disputing that this is the obvious way to read the slogan (nearly all readers have taken it to mean just that), I suggest that in the Orwellian context of Animal Farm, as opposed to that outside Orwell's text, the slogan can also bear quite another meaning, one which fits even better than the obvious one the issues raised by that work. If "equal" can mean something desirable and good, it can also in a primary sense mean no more than "identical" or "same." It is this meaning, I believe, that predominates in the slogan. The slogan should read, "some animals (not the pigs) are more equal (are more the same) than others (the superior pigs)." In this reading the pigs want less equality, not more; being "more equal" means that you belong to the common herd, not the elite. In the end this may lead to much the same conclusion as in the popular reading of the slogan - the pigs in both readings are marking themselves off from the other animals - but what is at issue here is the way equality is being defined, by the pigs and of course by Orwell himself. In the obvious reading of the slogan, equality is a desirable state of affairs, with the pigs claiming more of it for themselves; in the second reading it is distinctly undesirable, and the pigs want nothing to do with it. Lower animals are equal, the higher ones decidedly unequal. The slogan allows different readings due to the exploitable ambiguities of its key term, "equal."

In the early 1940s, at the time he was writing Animal Farm, Orwell also wrote approvingly of "a growing wish for greater equality" among English people, hoping that some of the worst inequalities on the social, economic, and educational fronts would be removed after the war.(3) This ideal of greater equality was obviously a basic tenet of his democratic socialism.

However, his concern for the progress of equality made him extra sensitive to the unpleasant fact that the notion of equality was vulnerable to cynical manipulation by politicians. In "Politics and the English Language" (1946) Orwell lists "equality" as one of those "words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly"(4). In 1984 he reveals even sharper anxieties about the term: Here not only has the ideal of equality as understood by the best political thinkers been totally abandoned, but the actual word itself has been reduced by "Newspeak" to mean no more than "identical."

As Orwell phrases it in his appendix, "The Principles of Newspeak," its former associations no longer exist: For example, "All mans are equal" was a possible Newspeak sentence, but only in the same sense in which "All men are redhaired" is a possible Old-speak sentence.

It did not contain a grammatical error, but it expressed a palpable untruth - i.e. that all men are of equal size, weight, or strength. The concept of political equality no longer existed, and this secondary meaning had accordingly been purged out of the word equal (5).

To reinforce the point, Orwell cites the passage from the American Declaration of Independence containing the phrase "all men are created equal" and adds, "It would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original"(6).

This brutal purging of time-honored meanings of the term equality can already be seen occurring in Animal Farm, where the pigs themselves form an embryonic party. The pigs with their "some are more equal than others" idea begin the process - completed in the world of 1984 - whereby "equal" starts to lose its libertarian meaning and comes to mean no more than "identical."

The term "equal" may, at the beginning of Animal Farm, hold its revolutionary connotation intact, but by the end of the book it carries a drastically reduced and sinister meaning.

If, as I think, this reading accords more convincingly than the more obvious and popular one with Orwell's main preoccupations in Animal Farm and 1984, it is both ironic and appropriate that the slogan should have engendered such misreading and misapplication; it has all the appearance of a statement deliberately designed by its author to create problems of interpretation in a context where the manipulation of language is an essential part of the political process.

NOTES

1. George Orwell, Animal Farm (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1951) 114.

2. Qtd. in John Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and

Claiming of 'St George' Orwell (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989) 240.

3. George Orwell, "The English People," Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters

of George Orwell, vol. 3, 1943-45, eds. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (Middlesex:

Penguin Books, 1970) 50-51.

4. Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," Collected Essays vol. 4, 1946,

162.

5. Orwell, 1984 (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1976) 250.

6. Orwell, 1984, 251.