The Pig’s Intellectual Exploitation In Animal Farm Essay, Research Paper

An author often writes a novel as a warning to mankind. In Animal Farm, George Orwell creates a world of animals that allegorically represent man. The intelligent pigs take advantage of the uneducated lower animals and take control of the farm. By showing the steady increase of the pigs’ intellectual exploitation of the lower animals, Orwell warns the reader of the importance of an education.

Immediately after the revolution, the pigs began their intellectual exploitation of the lower farm animals by telling them that the cows’ milk would be mixed with apples for the benefit of the pigs’ health. ” ‘ It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples. Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back’” (42). This statement dumbfounded the animals. The fact that apples and milk were being stolen was lost in the fear of the tyrant Jones returning. Their lack of intelligence keeps them from recognizing that the pigs are exploiting them, and they slowly begin to hand over their newly-won freedom to their new masters, the pigs. The next freedom the animals unknowingly give up is the freedom of choice.

As the debates persisted, Napoleon and Snowball began disagreeing more often. While one argued about new rebellions in far off places the other would argue about defending Animal Farm for their safety, but the animals themselves were to dumbfound to figure out who was telling the truth in their best interest. “The animals listened first to Napoleon, then to Snowball, and could not make uptheir minds which was right indeed, they always found themselves in agreement with the one who was speaking at the moment”(56). The animal’s decisions were made for them. Whichever idea sounded more professional or more persuasive they most often chose. None of the animals seemed to quite understand what the two pigs seemed to talk about they weren’t informed properly. If the animals couldn’t make informed choices, then they couldn’t make good choices. Some animals had the proper education and learned to read and write. These same animals had such a lack of intelligence that they couldn’t figure out what the pigs were talking about.

When questions aroused about how in the Battle of Cowshed Comrade Napoleon wasn’t as brave as they all thought, the only solution was to push the blame to Snowball. The pigs thought that if they explained to the lower animals how Snowball was against them, no one would look to Napoleon for the blame anymore. ” That was our mistake, comrade. For we know now—-it is all written down in the secret documents that we have found—-that in reality he was trying to lure us to our doom” (80). If the animals were smarter and had better memories, they could have remembered this battle more vividly then they wouldn’t have seen what the pigs were trying to accomplish. They would have seen how Squealer was manipulating their minds into thinking that Comrade Napoleon was the hero, Snowball was the enemy and he himself had been in on the human’s plan with Jones. Not only did the pigs say Snowball betrayed Animal Farm, but they also suggested that he created mischief on the farm while the animals slept at night.

After a terrible storm in November knocked down the windmill, the pigs needed the animals to work harder for the windmill to be finished. They experience harder labor and the food that was given to them wasn’t any better, but the pigs insisted that it was better now than it was back when Jones had owned the farm.

On Sunday mornings Squealer, holding down a long strip of paper with his trotter, would read out the them lists of figures proving that the production of every class of foodstuff had increased by two hundred per cent, three hundred per cent, or five hundred per cent, as the case might be. The animals saw no reason to disbelieve him, especially as they could no longer remember very clearly what conditions had been like before the Rebellion (89).

The pigs used their intelligence to persuade the animals into thinking that life had become what they had expected it to be before the rebellion. Since the majority of the animals couldn’t read, they believed that whatever that paper said was true. No one else read it but a pig and every animal believed it. Even if someone remembered life when Jones had run the farm, they couldn’t remember if it was better now or then, their memories weren’t very good. Soon some animals noticed a small change in their commandments.

On a moonlit night, the animals heard a crashing sound. They had found Squealer sprawled out on the ground with a paintbrush in his hand and the commandments dripping with paint. A few days later, Muriel had noticed something different about the commandments that she didn’t recall from her memory. “But a few days later Muriel?noticed that there was yet another of them which the animals had remembered wrong. They had thought the Fifth Commandment was ‘No animal shall drink alcohol,’ but there were two words that they had forgotten. Actually the Commandment read: ‘No animal shall drink alcohol to excess’”(103). This had occurred in other laws also, and yet no one questioned it. No one questioned the fact that Squealer was caught red handed by every animal on the farm and still no one did anything. The animals had somewhat of a grip on reality, but as soon as Squealer explained to them what were right and what was wrong that feeling of uncertainty was dismissed because of their lack of intelligence. One of the rules that stood firm was that any animal that was on two legs is an enemy but the pigs soon broke that rule also.

When years passed, no one could remember the old days before the rebellion. Soon the pigs were walking on two legs and wearing man’s clothing. “And a moment later, out from the door of the farmhouse came a long file of pigs, all walking on their hind legs”(122). The animals that couldn’t read or didn’t want to participate in learning to read knew the phrase “four legs good, two legs bad” and after this sight of the pigs the sheep started a chant of “four legs good, two legs better”. Not one of the animals objected to this, except for Clover who had taken Benjamin back to where the Seven Commandments were written. As they stood there, Benjamin read what was left of them, ” All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal then others”.

Since the pigs had the advantage of being more intelligent then the other animals, they controlled the farm. In this novel, an intellectual increase in the exploitation of the animals started with little things such as the eating of the apples for the pigs’ health. Then the animals couldn’t make an informed decision, which led to their bad decision making. Next Squealer would constantly tell the animals of the great things that they accomplished now that the pigs had gotten rid of Jones. After that the pigs used the animals’ lack of memory to their advantage by changing laws and telling the animals that the rules that were on the wall, had been there forever. At the end of the book, the pigs had completely manipulated the lower animals’ memories by going against the original views on animalism and by wearing man’s clothing and walking on two legs. George Orwell wrote this novel as a warning to man about what is going on in society today and he also warns about the importance of an education.