Animal Farm

Unit Review Sheet

Facts and Definitions

Lesson 1: What Is a Theme?

• A topic is a subject or something that is dealt with in a text or conversation.
• The plot of a story is its main events, presented by the author in a particular order.
• A theme is an idea that is important in a work of literature or the message that the author is trying to share.

Lesson 2: Major's Dream

• Understanding the roles of different parts of speech can be an important part of writing powerful and effective prose.

Lesson 3: The Rebellion

• Pronouns are words used to take the places of nouns.
• Personal pronouns refer to specific people or things.
• Interrogative pronouns (such as "who" and "what") usually begin questions.
• Relative pronouns begin a special type of dependent clause called a relative clause. Relative pronouns include words like "who," "that," and "which."
• An antecedent is the word to which a pronoun refers.
• Personal pronouns must have clear antecedents.

Lesson 4: Work on the Farm

• A business letter format is used when writing to employees of businesses or organizations or to government officials.
• A friendly letter format is used for correspondence between family members, friends, or acquaintances. It is a less formal type of letter.

Lesson 5: The Battle of the Cowshed

• A pronoun must agree with its antecedent in number, gender, and person, and pronoun antecedents must be clear.
• Indefinite pronouns (like someone, anything, and nobody) do not refer to a specific person or thing.

Lesson 6: Comrade Napoleon

• A satire is a literary work that uses humor or exaggeration to point out vices, often of those involved in politics.
• George Orwell intended Animal Farm to be a satire of the Russian Revolution.
• Pronouns can be in the subjective, objective, or possessive case.

Lesson 7: Changes on the Farm

• [none]

Lesson 8: The End of the Rebellion

• The purpose and recipient of a letter will determine the appropriate form that the letter should take — either a business letter or a friendly letter.

Lesson 9: The Battle of the Windmill

• Personification is a literary device in which animals or objects are given human qualities or characteristics.
• It's important to focus on not only the format of business letters but also the tone of the text.
• A business letter should be concise, professional, and courteous.

Lesson 10: Boxer's Fate

• Diagramming the plot of a work of fiction can be a great first step in analyzing it.
• A work of literature's theme will be reflected in specific incidents that occur within it.
• You will find that you have identified a significant or important theme if you are able to point to particular parts of the story where that theme is evident.
• The argument that a theme is central to a book is only really valid if you can provide evidence from the text to support that argument.

Lesson 11: The Farmers Pay a Visit

• The animals created seven commandments early in their rule of the farm, but by the end of the novel, the implementation of those commandments had changed considerably.
• Themes in literature can help us understand a novel more deeply, and those themes can also be applied to historical and present-day situations.
• Often, the theme of a novel can tell us a lot about how the author thinks the world works or wishes that it might work.

Final Project: Animal Farm Letter

• Be sure to study for your unit test — you'll want to review the format and style of business and friendly letters and also review pronouns and their uses (including cases and antecedents).