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George Orwell was chiefly interested in justice and equality. He was a deeply pessimistic man who had powers of imagination which few of his contemporaries dreamed one man could have. Orwell s character and writing style was so deep that qualities that were and still are manifest in his work, did not reveal themselves in his life (Scott-Killer 273). In his short life, Orwell distinguished himself as a novelist, journalist, essayist, literary critic, and political polemicist. In his writings, Orwell used a personalized blend of moral commitment and social commentary to distinguish himself as a major spokesman for his generation (Beacham 1084). Animal Farm was one of the first real attempts to use a beast fable to satirize communism.
The novel is quoted to be a struggle about farm animals that have driven out their human exploiter, to create a free and equal community. In doing this, Animal Farm takes the form of a mast ingeniously worked-out recapitulation of the history of Soviet Russia from 1917 up to the Teheran Conference. George Orwell uses the events of the Russian in his political satire Animal Farm to express the main theme, Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Animal Farm is a frivolous form of the animal tale that conveys with immense power a profoundly bitter message (Williams 107). George Orwell s travels to Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War had a profound impact on Animal Farm. Because of his travels to Spain, Orwell developed disillusionment with the Communist party and convinced himself of the impending treat of totalitarianism on the survival of intellectual freedom (Beacham 1082).
In Animal Farm Orwell shows and expresses his opposition of the doctrine of imperialism which fosters aristocratic privilege at the expense of the poor and disadvantaged (1082). For example, shortly after the Revolution in Animal Farm, everyone from the pigs to the horses are considered equals, but as time passes, the pigs become more corrupt and greedy for power. To get this power, the pigs use their superior intellect to modify the rules to where the poor and disadvantaged are treated with little or no respect. For example, the fourth commandment written by the animals in Animal Farm stated that no animal shall sleep in a bed. By manipulating the words and the minds of the other animals, they added with sheets. Therefore, by adding two little words, the pigs were now allowed to sleep in human beds and become more and more corrupt in their human ways.
Animal Farm was like nothing Orwell had ever written. George Orwell once said, Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole (Draper 2573). Although Animal Farm is much different for Orwell s previous realistic manner, seeds for this tale are present in earlier works. For example, Orwell uses metaphors likening men to beast, and Orwell starts to show his whole negative attitude towards society (Williams 107 - 108). Nothing in Orwell s career indicated his desire to write politically committed literature that was also an aesthetic experience would find expression in a skillfully executed animal fable (Draper 2573). Animal Farm is a deceptively simple animal fable about a barnyard revolt that satirizes the consequences of the Russian Revolution.
In this novel, George Orwell develops his own style that pronounces him as a master of English prose. Animal Farm is a model of direct, clear description, so transparent that even without the help of figures of speech, the readers are able to actually visualize the animal at work on their human tasks (Williams 175). This aspect is shown directly in this exert from Animal Farm: How they toiled and sweated to get the hay in! But their efforts were rewarded, for the harvest was an even bigger success than they had hoped Boxer and Clover would harness themselves to the cutter or the horse-rake (no bits or reins were needed in these days, of course) and tramp steadily round and round the field with a pig walking behind and calling out Gee up, comrade! (Orwell 35). Animal Farm is engineered with perfect tightness and economy, largely because it is built round an actual historical incident and although the events mocked in Animal Farm have receded into the past, it still remains as a powerful satire. Orwell put much care into the construction of his masterpiece.
Through time and hard work, Orwell solves one of the most recurrent problems of Utopian writing: having to deal with a mass of unfamiliar inventions, appliances, and arrangements in society (Bloom 2131). For example, Orwell states in Animal Farm that, Sometimes the work was hard; the implements had been designed for human beings and not for animals, and it was a great drawback that no animal was able to use any tool that involved standing on his hind legs. But the pigs were so clever that they could think of a way round every difficulty (Orwell 35). Animal Farm was written in a pure, subtle, and simplistic form of narrative that evokes descriptive imagery and stunning clarity of purpose.
Orwell believed that the key to ideal prose was to form a simple, colorless window pane. Although Orwell could never reach his ideal, he did leave his own distinctive style of prose that has been mocked by very successful writers. George Woodcock once said, But the style, it is said rightly, is the man. And in that crystalline prose which Orwell developed so that reality could always show through its transparency, lies perhaps the greatest and certainly the most durable achievement of a good and angry man who sought for the truth because he knew that only in its air would freedom and justice serve (Williams 176). George Orwell passionately believed in the power of language for good and for ill. He believed that to support the right use of language and to give a voice to otherwise inarticulate longings of humanity was the artist s responsibility (Magill 1151).
Orwell developed his own Orwellian dialect or language which presents experience and then argues from it (Bloom 2129). The language of Animal Farm is Orwell s highest literary achievement precisely because it is appropriate to that particular story and because he told the truth is a straight forward common-sense way that separated him and his morals from most of the people of the eighteenth century. This is true throughout Animal Farm as he directly shows how corrupt man and society really is. Animal Farm is an allegorical beast fable that stems from an artistic tradition attributed to Aesop. A beast fable is most often designed to satirize human follies as well as provide moral instruction.
In a well written beast fable, such as Animal Farm, the author must never allow the animals to be simply beasts. If this happens, the piece then becomes a non satirical children s story that seems like a fairy tale rather than a serious satire about mankind and his faults. Animal Farm shows Orwell s ability to maintain a delicate, satiric balance that keeps his readers conscious simultaneously of the human traits satirized and of the animals as animals (Williams 107). Orwell is clearly a direct descendant of English satirists of the eighteenth century. Animal Farm is compared mostly to Swift s Gulliver s Travels.
Both masterpieces beautifully satirize the corruptness of governments and both have situations where fingers are being pointed at the limitations of human kindness and decency (Beacham 1084 - 1085). For example, Gulliver s Travels is indirectly centered around the two very different governments in France and England and how they solve problems and disputes, while Animal Farm deals with a newly formed government in Russia and its problems with corrupt leaders and lack of moralistic leadership. George Orwell used techniques from the past from such writer s as Aesop, Swift, and Defoe to create his own simplistic Orwellian style of satire that has become the standard for modern satire. Animal Farm is an account of the bogging down of Utopian aspirations in the quicksand of human nature (Paley 10).
An example of how the perfect society began to crumble in Animal Farm is when plans for the windmill began splitting the leadership and thoughts of the animals. As a satirist, George Orwell, had to take a mass of empirical data and consciously or unconsciously select those details. This selection almost always involves grotesque and ugly details that justify Orwell s negative attitude towards society (Williams 103). One example of grotesque details that Orwell incorporated into Animal Farm is how he describes the mass killings that are ordered by Napoleon. After the grotesque and ugly details are gathered, Orwell develops the political satire by the organizing, the arranging, and the shaping of the collected material. A political satire such as Animal Farm is not a transparent medium through which the reader is given a view of reality; it is a very peculiar lens which renders distorted and often grotesque images of society (Williams 103 - 104).
In other words, George Orwell uses a simple tale about a barnyard revolt to express a broad and disturbing theme about mans overall character and lifestyle. Animal Farm directly satirizes the events in the Soviet Union from before the October Revolution to the end of WWII and is mainly concerned with the limitations and abuses of political power. It is written with such a sophistication and subtlety, that readers unaware of Russian history might very well see it as an animal story only (Magill 265). In actuality, every character in Animal Farm can be seen as symbolic of historical Russian figures. For example, the two leaders of the revolution, Snowball and Napoleon, are symbolic of Trotsky and Stalin all the way down to the fleeing of Trotsky/Snowball. Much like the problems faced by the Russians shortly after the revolution, the animals in Animal Farm also had problems such as adapting to their new government and where they stand in the new society.
More problems were how to combine power with ideals, and how do the oppressed who rise above their oppressors manage to keep from becoming like oppressors (Magill 265). It is said that most revolutions end in the same corruptness and inequality that they start in and the revolution in Animal Farm is no different as the animals revolt against a corrupt leader in Mr. Jones, and end up with a just as corrupt leader in Napoleon. In the end the pigs are indistinguishable from humans and the ideals of the revolution seem distant or forgotten in the face of terror, manipulation and despair (Beacham 1083).
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Research essay sample on Animal Farm Gulliver Travels
