Personal Advantages
Uploaded by lightseeker on Feb 19, 2004
Qn: “Orwell was really suggesting that the overthrow of unjust regimes tended to be done in a blaze of noble ideals, but inevitably, the power-hungry and scrupulous managed to take over and rearrange things primarily for their own personal advantage.” With close reference to the text, examine the truth of this statement.
This statement is fairly true in the text. Although the animals do have several noble ideals like the Seven Commandments and the maxim “Four legs good, two legs bad”. These summarized the animals’ rules and regulations and were supposed to be followed strictly. However, ever since the expulsion of Snowball, everything in the farm has been going downhill. Snowball can be considered as the “rule-keeper” of the farm as he is the one who gives orders for animals to follow. The orders that he give help the farm in achieving their goal and yet, keeping order at the same time.
After the expulsion of Snowball, Napoleon appears more prominently in the story. He is the “corrupter” in Animal Farm. He undid all the good things that Snowball had done and caused Animal Farm a lot of harm. He also did not really help the farm and the orders he give are biased towards the pigs and the dogs. He did not help the farm but corrupted their original ideals of Animalism. The other animals suffer a lot under the leadership of Napoleon, thus unchanging the previous situation under the leadership of Jones. Napoleon is a very sly creature who “has a reputation for getting his own way”. His sidekick, Squealer, was said to be able to “turn black into white” and was very persuasive. He always managed to persuade the animals to listen to Napoleon’s orders. This was also helped by the fact that the animals were rather gullible and had short-term memory, thus being unable to remember things very clearly.