Orwell makes frequent use of animal analogies to describe characters in 1984. While the novel is lacking in actual animals, it is full of people with animalistic appearances and tendencies, which Orwell underlines through metaphors and similes.

Animal analogies are not only a motif in this specific novel, but in Orwell's work overall. For example, in his allegorical novella Animal Farm, he uses anthropomorphized animal characters to criticize human society and political systems. In 1984, Orwell uses animal analogies to shed light on the inhumane nature of totalitarian governance, suggesting that the ability to feel compassion for others and think for oneself distinguishes people from animals. The comparisons also feel appropriate in the novel's propagandistic atmosphere, as propaganda cartoons often depict animals to criticize leaders, armies, and people. 

The first book includes many instances in which the narrator compares characters to animals. For example, when Goldstein appears on the telescreen during the Two Minutes Hate, the narrator compares his face to that of a sheep, specifying that "the voice, too, has a sheeplike quality." At first, the similarity seems to be limited to simile and metaphor. Eventually, however, it becomes evident that the sheep resemblance is intended by the Party members who have created the footage of Goldstein, as his bleating voice turns into "an actual sheep's bleat, and for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep." The sheep comparison is, in some ways, rather ironic. While similes and metaphors revolving around sheep tend to connote the inability to think for oneself, the Party's issue with Goldstein is precisely that he thinks and acts independently of their will.

When Winston reflects back on people's responses to the telescreens during the Two Minutes Hate, the passage includes other animal analogies. There was, for example, a "little sandy-haired woman" whose mouth opened and shut "like that of a landed fish." In addition, the dark-haired girl cries "Swine! Swine! Swine!" at the screen. 

At lunch in the canteen later that day, Winston seems to be surrounded by animals. To begin with, he is struck by how a man at a nearby table sounds like a duck: "The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck." In the same chapter, the narrator calls Winston's neighbor Parsons "froglike" and a man sitting on the other side of the room "beetlelike." Winston finds it curious how the Ministries is full of the latter: "little dumpy men, growing stout very early in life, with short legs, swift scuttling movements, and fat inscrutable faces with very small eyes." None of these animal comparisons give a positive impression of the characters surrounding Winston: the man who sounds like a duck is characterized as a propaganda machine, unable to think for himself; Parsons is characterized as clueless and slimy; the Ministry men are characterized as dirty and fickle.

Later in the novel, the specific metaphors and similes give way to more general animal analogies. Especially during Winston's torture in the third part, the narrator compares characters to animals in general. When the Skull-Faced Man is sent to Room 101, he begins howling "like an animal." Winston himself becomes "as shameless as an animal." The specific animal analogies in the beginning of the novel indicate that, under the totalitarian system, people are robbed of their humanity. The more general animal analogies at the end show that once they become prisoners and victims, people also lose their individuality.