What is power? Power means the strength and the right given of controlling anyone else. However, when too much power is given to someone, dictatorship cannot be avoided. In the book “Animal Farm”, George Orwell used a lot of events happened on the farm to illustrate that how did the ‘animalism’ turn into “totalitarianism” and well defined the sentence “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”, which also reflects how the society was like at that time. Therefore, in order to find out the reason why George Orwell wrote the story, this essay will talk about how power is abused and the effect on other “comrades” by using several events and the examples of language features used in the story.
Throughout the story, the first signal that illustrates the corruption in pigs started right after the animals chased away Mr. Jones. When the animals milked the cows and discussed about what to do with all the milk, Napoleon cried “Never mind the milk, comrades…placing himself in front of the buckets” (p18) and then all buckets of milk disappeared. This is foreshadowing that later Napoleon may become the kind of leader who keeps everything good for himself and does not care about others, and this actually happened later. Several days later, someone found out that all the milk was mixed in pigs’ mash everyday as well as the apples and pointed that pigs broke the rule of “All animals are equal” (p17). This time the pigs cannot stay calm anymore. Squealer firstly said that they pigs actually do not like milk and apples and the reason why they added those into their mash was because they were ‘brainworkers’ and those were good for their brain and only when they were healthy enough the other’s safety can be guaranteed. After that, Squealer used repetition…
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…st followed what Squealer said and thought that was the truth, which is quite pathetic for them but it was also the wish of Napoleon: animals should be totally loyal and obedient to him.
Language can be used as a weapon to control others. In the story, after old Major died, the pigs distorted the meaning of his words and twisted the idea of socialism and gradually turned it into totalitarianism. Those pigs knew that other animals were not able to oppose Old Major’s idea, so they used that as an excuse for disobeying the ‘Seven Commandments’ and did whatever they want for their own benefits. They used outrageous terror and abuse of language to keep other animals in dark and finally, they became even greedier and totally destroyed the farm. This symbolizes the society in 1945 and it is the reason why George Orwell wrote this book — to wake up the people at that time.
