Animal House (Allegory)
The title of the film itself is an allegory of sorts. The "animal house" of the film is not an actual zoo, but a fraternity, filled with young men who want to unleash their wilder, animalistic sides, to live instinctually and freely. Early on in the film, Katy implores Boon to give up his hard-partying ways and asks him when he's going to stop "hanging around with a bunch of animals getting drunk every weekend." The fraternity symbolizes a youthful and wild-hearted spirit, an irreverence for societal pressure, and a place to be, in short, an animal.
Drunkenness (Motif)
It is fitting that in a film about young people embracing their animal sides, a lot of scenes feature drunkenness and alcohol. After attending the stuffy Omega rush event, Larry and Kent wander towards Delta, a fraternity with much lower standards. The first Delta brother we meet is Bluto, who is so intoxicated that he barely notices the fact that he is urinating on Larry and Kent's feet. Inside, the alcohol flows freely and beer cans fly through the air. Later, we see many other scenes of intoxication, and at one point Bluto downs an entire handle of whiskey in order to cheer himself up after the administration starts carting away the fraternity's belongings.
Food (Symbol)
At one point in the film, we see Bluto going through the lunch line at the cafeteria, piling his tray high with food items and taking without reservation. Some food he eats while he's still moving through the line, or eats some of and then puts back on its shelf. The image of Bluto's appetite getting away from him is comic, but it also symbolic of the excess of his appetite, his insatiability. His appetite runs away with him, and leads to an outrageous scene of gluttony. Thus, the food is not only a comic prop, but a symbol of the fraternity's—and particularly Bluto's—unappeasable appetite, its tendency to indulge.
Deathmobile (Symbol)
At the end of the film, to get revenge on the institution for expelling them, the Delta brothers stage a wild prank to derail the homecoming parade. They take control of the parade with a rogue float, which eventually comes apart to reveal a black car that the brothers have outfitted with skulls and other morbid paraphernalia, and labeled the "Deathmobile." The car is a symbol of the Delta brothers' irreverence to the cheeriness and optimism of the institution, and their desire to disrupt, alienate, and create chaos in their wake.
Sex (Motif)
Sex, another indulgence, comes up again and again in the film. In the beginning, Boon and Otter talk about Otter's latest conquest with a lascivious glee. There is a recurring scene in which Mandy (and later, Babs) masturbates Greg Marmalard in a parked car while he talks about what's bothering him. Bluto spies on Mandy while she's getting undressed in her room, only to fall from a second story window. Larry goes to bed with Carmine's daughter, then struggles to decide whether or not to take advantage of her when she's passed out, then later learns she's underage right before they are about to have sex on the football field. Katy, bored with Boon, sleeps with Professor Jennings, and we see them on the morning after when Boon goes to confront her about her unavailability. Sex recurs throughout the film and is a kind of motif, yet another manifestation of the fraternity brothers' indulgent attitudes.
