I read George Orwell’s Animal Farm for the first time last summer, on my quest to read all the typical “high school books” that my school never taught. I worried at first, because I hated 1984 when I read it in 10th grade, but I instantly fell in love with Animal Farm. I devoured it in an afternoon. I thought it was brilliant. It’s a short book, only about a hundred pages, and yet the story packs a punch that will leave you dazed and thinking for days.
Originally, George Orwell wrote Animal Farm as a critique of the Russian Revolution and an allegorical retelling of Stalin’s rise to power. Although both revolutions began with a quest for certain high principles, these principles were abandoned by their leaders, Stalin as represented by the pigs, and these pigs eventually embraced the behaviors and ideas of their original oppressors, the humans. Revolutionaries may believe that they are the exception, but absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the pigs succumb to it as well.
What I find most fascinating about this novel is how profoundly control is linked to the words we use. The pigs gain power not solely through violence, but through a much subtler, more dangerous method: slowly changing the rhetoric and changing reality with it.
After the humans are overthrown, the animals start to build up their ideal society, named Animal Farm, and they call their philosophy Animalism. For several chapters, everything runs smoothly. Then, in Chapter Five, two of the pigs, Napoleon and Snowball, are debating Snowball’s proposal to build a windmill. Napoleon initially dismisses the idea, but soon after, nine large dogs appear and chase Snowball off the farm. Napoleon then takes leadership of the farm and announces that he supports the project. He insists that he never really opposed it, but instead was just pretending in order to get rid of Snowball.
In Chapter Six, the pigs begin to sleep inside the farmer’s house, and even more scandalously, sleep in their beds. The animals question it, saying that goes against their seven commandments, created when they first established Animal Farm, rules to keep animals from becoming like humans. The commandment was, “No animal shall sleep in a bed.” However, the pigs insist that the commandment actually reads “No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets,” and that has always been the commandment. The animals had just forgotten. A few chapters later, after a bloody round of executions, the animals see that the commandment reading, “No animal shall kill any other animal” has been changed to “No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.” Again, they believe that the commandment has always been that way, blaming their bad memories.
Perhaps the most chilling example of this rhetoric comes in the last chapter. The last of the seven commandments reads: “All animals are equal.” Near the end, however, when the animals are feeling desperate, feeling as if something must be terribly wrong, they return to that wall to see if the commandments are still there, and they find in place of the Seven Commandments, there is only one, and it reads:
“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
This is the most dangerous form of tyranny: not loud declarations of new, oppressive laws, but slow, subtle changes to the rhetoric that goes unnoticed by most of the population. Animal Farm shows us that changing the words we use changes the way we think, and thus if our leaders can control our words, they control our minds.
In this novel, the animals are easily deceived by the changes to their laws. Part of this is because the pigs are such persuasive speakers. Through manipulation, they convince everyone to question their own memories and experiences, leading them to remember things differently. Instead of staying alert and questioning what the pigs tell them, they blindly believe everything they are told. It’s not entirely their fault—the pigs are extremely intelligent, and some other animals, like the chickens, are less intelligent, but if they had been more aware, they could have stopped the pigs before it was too late. Their story is a tragedy, but one that can be avoided, and reading this book reminded me not to be lured into complacency, but to always be alert and question everything.
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