Pierce Arnold - Animal Farm as a Myth and Journey 4/27/2026

Recently my girlfriend and I began to read through Animal Farm together, which for me is the second time experiencing the story. Animal Farm represents a type of myth that doesn’t really fit into the hero’s journey, the second self motif, or any of the other traditional archetypes we have discussed in class. That said, I still think very much that it is an excellent story, and there are a lot of things we can learn by applying what we have discussed in class to it. Firstly, Animal Farm could very well be considered a modern myth. Just as we discussed in class, it relays deeper truths about reality, without being intended to be taken literally. The story taken in full does not give us the same archetypes and journeys that are present in works of Homer or other such classical examples of myths, but yet there are similarities. Part of the reason we cannot draw direct lines between these things, I think, is because they are written on different scales. The Odyssey or The Iliad each tell their story and express their meaning by investing a lot of time into one or two primary characters. Thus the journey of the hero is formed as these characters go through the troubles that are needed for the author to express their meaning. Animal Farm, on the other hand, is a much shorter story that has many more characters. There is not enough time to spend getting to know any one of them, much less have them experience any complex challenges. Rather than taking a similar path to the Greek myths, Animal Farm explores the journey of the entire farm at once. In a way then, we actually can find elements of the hero’s journey if we see the story from the perspective of the farm as a whole. I think this idea and perspective could be very useful, not just for Animal Farm but any such large scale myth, but I will leave it to the reader to apply this knowledge in their own pursuit of knowledge.

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