To clarify: "a long time" means from roughly 500 to roughly 1800. (You all may not like it, but people really did distinguish between "beasts" and "christians"

To clarify: "a long time" means from roughly 500 to roughly 1800. (You all may not like it, but people really did distinguish between "beasts" and "christians" in this time period. Animal Farm is a much more thorough allegory than it appears to people with no farm experience, as all the animals behave much as their real life counterparts do [I understand that in the US the police even identify themselves as "sheepdogs"; compare the Animal Farm use], and on a farm the farmers do take care to act for the immediate benefit of all the stock, just as long as they're the ultimate beneficiaries: a farm being an economic unit composed of multiple living beings but organised for the benefit of a few)