The short novel is an allegory in which animals play the roles of the Bolshevik revolutionaries and overthrow and oust the human owners of the farm, setting it up as a commune in which, at first, all animals are equal; class and status disparities soon emerge, however, between the different animal species. The novel describes how a society's ideologies can be manipulated and twisted by individuals in positions of social and political power, including how a utopian society is made impossible by the corrupting nature of the very power necessary to create it.