Animal Farm: The True Villain

Listen, everything you think you know about Animal Farm is backwards.

We've been reading this book wrong for seventy years. I'm about to prove it,

with something hiding in plain sight in chapter one. Old Major dies in chapter one.

That's the twist. Not that he dies, but what his death actually means.

Nobody talks about this: Old Major is the villain of this story,

not the hero. Orwell knew exactly what he was doing when he killed him off

immediately. Let me walk you through this, chapter by chapter. Chapter one opens

with Old Major gathering all the animals for a meeting. He's twelve years