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Old Major (also called Willingdon Beauty, his show name) is the first major character described by George Orwell in Animal Farm. This "purebred" of pigs is the kind, grandfatherly philosopher of change; an obvious metaphor for Karl Marx, though some elements of Old Major are directly from Vladimir Lenin. Old Major proposes a solution to the animals' desperate plight under the Jones' "administration" (representing the tsar and autocracy) when he inspires a rebellion of sorts among the animals. The actual time of the revolt is unsaid. It could be the next day or several generations down the road. Old Major's "Barn-Yard Speech" at the very onset of the story could be a reference to the Communist Manifesto.

Shortly after his death, the animals rise up in revolt and oust the men from power. Early on everything goes well and Old Major's dream seems to be coming true. The pig Snowball largely takes on the intellectual and political leadership of the farm and seems to share Old Major's principal of genuine concern for the animals of the farm. While Snowball is respected by most of the animals, the rest of the pigs, led by Napoleon, begin to move to oust Snowball. This occurs after the debate over the windmills when Napoleon unleashes his trained dogs to chase Snowball from the farm.

The Seven Commandments that Snowball had transcribed, that were supposed to encompass Old Major's general philosophy, are gradually altered and deformed under Napoleon until they come to entirely opposite meanings than were originally intended.

In both film adaptations, Major dies while provoking the animals into rebelling. In the 1954 adaption, he dies suddenly while the animals are singing. The 1999 version is even more unfaithful- Jones slips in mud while investigating the sounds coming from the barn, fires his shotgun, and indirectly hits Major, killing him.

With Animal Farm being parallel to the formation of the Soviet Union, Old Major was based on both Lenin and Marx. The animals hold him in high esteem, and dig up his skull and walk past it and salute it every day, much as Lenin's body was preserved and is kept on display in Moscow. Marx, author of the Communist Manifesto, died before the first communist revolution, whereas Old Major, founder of Animalism, dies before the Animal Farm revolution. His body was saluted by the soldiers everyday, even after the revolution.

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