George Orwell: Animal Farm

After reading Animal Farm we can see many things that lead us to comprehend why Orwell was so concerned and focused on politics, government and in a more general way, the society. But what is the point of criticizing a political model? Is the text trying to teach us something? Or it is just an ironic way to let us know the decadence and the conflicts between parties not only in Russia, but in the world?

There are many things in the text that try to portray the situation of the different political systems in the world, but we must focus now on the very beginning, at the time when Orwell makes a difference between characters: the ones who have the power (humans) and the ones who want liberty (animals).

"Is it not crystal clear, then, comrades, that all the evils of this life of ours spring from the tyranny of human beings? Only get rid of Man, and the produce of our labour would be our own. A1most overnight we could become rich and free. What then must we do? Why, work night and day, body and soul, for the overthrow of the human race! That is my message to you, comrades: Rebellion! I do not know when that Rebellion will come, it might be in a week or in a hundred years, but I know, as surely as I see this straw beneath my feet, that sooner or later justice will be done. Fix your eyes on that, comrades, throughout the short remainder of your lives! And above all, pass on this message of mine to those who come after you, so that future generations shall carry on the struggle until it is victorious.”

As we can see, it is unusual that animals can control humans, or take advantage on them, but the point is that animals cannot think. This is the first message Orwell is sending indirectly, he is telling us that we are not thinking as we are supposed to be, we are acting in such a way we are being leaded by our instincts, just like the animals. 

After Orwell makes this last difference, he continues making differences by separating the animals which are able to think and learn, and the ones who cannot do that.

“As for the pigs, they could already read and write perfectly. The dogs learned to read fairly well, but were not interested in reading anything except the Seven Commandments. Muriel, the goat, could read somewhat better than the dogs,(…). Benjamin could read as well as any pig, but never exercised his faculty.(…)Clover learnt the whole alphabet, but could not put words together. Boxer could not get beyond the letter D. He would trace out A, B, C, D, in the dust with his great hoof, and then would stand staring at the letters with his ears back, sometimes shaking his forelock, trying with all his might to remember what came next and never succeeding. On several occasions, indeed, he did learn E, F, G, H, but by the time he knew them, it was always discovered that he had forgotten A, B, C, and D. (…) Mollie refused to learn any but the six letters which spelt her own name.”

In this part of the text, we can see the pigs are taking the leadership and control of the whole farm, this passage reflects that only the smartest people is the one that should have the power. Also, this passage mentions one of the main problems of the society: and that is education. By this part of the text, we are introduced the society theme in which we can see the problems of it and the organization that is being established by the pigs. Making a reference to the reality, this represents the government and the citizens asking for a better lifestyle, of course, this includes the establishments of the 7 rules, the need of learning, the establishment of new responsibilities, and the need of a team work. These words included by Orwell are a clear example of the influence he had by his education, because as a must, education is the base of the society, and this is a socialist thought. These chapters of the text clearly establish how society is developed and how the problems are being solved through the evolution of the politics, just as the theory of the rights establishes.

Due to the establishment of this political model, there must be a leader, where Snowball (the first to be leadering the farm) and Napoleon are the most capable to lead. Now, there is another problem of the society, and that is the difference of ideas, where these characters take a part. As in a common political model, there are built two parties now, the one in which Napoleon leads, and the one in which Snowball leads. Then, after this happens, we can see a democratic model, in which there is a moment when the animals need to take a decision, but this decision is not made as democratically as it should be; now Napoleon takes absolute control and the political model changes to a dictatorship as we can see in the following passage:

“At last the day came when Snowball's plans were completed. At the Meeting on the following Sunday the question of whether or not to begin work on the windmill was to be put to the vote. When the animals had assembled in the big barn, Snowball stood up and, though occasionally interrupted by bleating from the sheep, set forth his reasons for advocating the building of the windmill. Then Napoleon stood up to reply. He said very quietly that the windmill was nonsense and that he advised nobody to vote for it, and promptly sat down again; he had spoken for barely thirty seconds, and seemed almost indifferent as to the effect he produced. At this Snowball sprang to his feet, and shouting down the sheep, who had begun bleating again, broke into a passionate appeal in favour of the windmill. Until now the animals had been about equally divided in their sympathies, but in a moment Snowball's eloquence had carried them away. In glowing sentences he painted a picture of Animal Farm as it might be when sordid labor was lifted from the animals' backs.”

From this part on, the struggles between human beings and animals are seen as a falling action of the plot and are not so important due to the fictional focus Orwell creates in that part. Making a more focused analysis on the previous paragraphs, we can mention that the society and the literature are linked in a way in which both create each other. What I mean by this is that the society forms the literature by the context which includes culture and history that the same society builds up in an implicit way, but at the same time the literature creates a society because it transmits the voice of the people so that they can share their own ideas and their context and make history itself. That is what Orwell does in this book, he uses the literature as a resource in which his background and previous analysis is written so that society can comprehend himself and the society itself, and not only transmit one idea or his background, its more than that.

In A Song of Myself from Whitman, society is viewed form two different points of view. The first one is the intrapersonal, in which Whitman starts from himself and then he opens to a wider circle in which he talks about everyone at the end. In comparison with Animal Farm, Whitman is influenced by the life he carried at the time he participated in the Civil War, in fact he writes with his conviction and with the purpose of transmitting his patriotism to the society, just as Orwell did but in a fiction mood because of his context. In comparison with Dorian Gray, the critique differs too at the time we see that Wilde focuses on the individual mainly, but that individual critique has also a social background, due to the Victorian context and the way things were seen. Another difference is that Orwell is more focused on the political system he was living in Russia, and Wilde is focusing his critique on the way morality was seen as well as the stereotipes.

Bibliography:

Orwell, G. (n.d.). Animal Farm. HarperCollins. (Original work published 1945), 110pp.

Orwell, G. (n.d.). 1984. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (Original work published 1949), 110pp. 314pp.