The Animal Farm Essay, Research Paper

George Orwell s, The Animal Farm, depicts how power can corrupt society. If one person receives too much power, one will most likely lead up to dictatorship. To exemplify this idea, Orwell uses a farm to represent a society and the animals inside to portray the people. Orwell s use of the pigs and animals are also an analogy that people sometimes act as mindless pigs . Orwell makes the reader realize just how bad a society of dictatorship can really be.

The initial theme of the novel is, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Power, in a sense, is bad because with power, there is responsibility. If one takes advantage of that responsibility, then there will be corruption. Orwell portrays this by permitting the farm animals to nominate the pigs to be in charge of the farm. The pigs left in charge are Napoleon, Squealer, and Snowball. Napoleon and Squealer both have evil intentions by turning the dogs after Snowball, in other words, killing him. Napoleon would make the other animals work long hours and give them little portions of food, while he and Squealer would feast on large meals. Napoleon and Squealer took advantage of their role as governor and ate all the food, drank beer, and lived in the owner s house. However, to the farm animals, they considered these to be the 7 commandments:

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.

2. Whatever goes upon four legs and has wings is a friend.

3. No animal shall wear clothes.

4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.

5. No animal shall drink alcohol.

6. No animal shall kill another animal.

7. All animals are equal.

Toward the end of the novel the pigs will have broken all of these commandments, which lead to their demise.

Orwell s novel depicts how a society can be corrupted if all the power was left to one individual. In this case, the animals left all the power to the pigs and they took advantage of that power. In my opinion, Orwell did a good job in portraying animals to signify the human counterpart. I enjoyed the fact that he made the pigs in charge and later we found out that the pigs were evil and corrupted, similar to politicians that runs our government. This analogy depicts politicians to be like dirty pigs. George Orwell s Animal Farm is a parody of the Russian Revolution, though I do not know much of the Russian Revolution I do know that it formed the U.S.S.R. For this reason, I understand the position the author had on Communism and Orwell does express it by showing how the pigs only cared for themselves and not the other animals. It s obvious that Orwell does not agree with the Communist view and who wouldn t. I personally agree with Orwell because Communism is essentially bad and a government cannot expect to benefit from it.