Benjamin (Animal Farm) simply flees Napoleon's unendurable regime with some of the other animals. (Neither event occurs in the book.) Benjamin (Animal Farm) Benjamin is a donkey in George Orwell's novel "Animal Farm". He is also the oldest of all the animals (he is alive in the last scene of the novel). He is less straightforward than most characters in the novel, and a number of interpretations have been put forward to which social class he represents as regards to the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union. ("Animal Farm" is an allegory for the evolution of Communism in Russia, with each animal representing
The Ass and the Pig the life of ease he has left and is tempted back. His situation is made clear to him by the relation of an animal fable (supposedly of a former birth) in which a young ox complains to his elder brother of the easy lot of the farmyard pig. Soon afterwards the pig is slaughtered for a marriage feast and the ox finds comfort in the reflection that a simpler diet is at least a guarantee of survival. Although different pairs of animals are involved in largely different situations, and although the conclusions that their authors draw from them differ too,