Have you heard the old adage by lord Acton that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely? This powerful, universal message is illustrated in George Orwell’s “animal farm” primarily, he wrote this animal fable as an allegory of the Russian revolution. What this outstanding novel portrays is the failure of the revolution leading ultimately to communism. Additionally, the novel highlights that good will and sound principles can fall victim to ambition, selfishness and hypocrisy strongly reveling the doctrine of communism, it closely follows the events of the revolution with characters representing real-life people or groups.
Under the guidance of the pigs, the animals exile farmer jones, take over the farm and live contently, simply and successfully. Democracy works for a short time however under napoleons leadership, the pigs soon transform into the enemy – through many insidious ways. Since the novels publication, there have been millions of people oppressed by totalitarian governments – under the doctrines of Communism, Fascism and Nazism.
Orwell’s message is clear ultimately, any society which has tyrannical leaders is doomed to fail, inevitability such leaders manipulate power for their own benefit. Thus, communism does not work power corrupts absolutely and yet democracy works for all these reasons, “animal farm” must defiantly be prescribed reading for students of the 21st century. There are three types of power, the good, the bad and the ugly. In the beginning of the novel, the pigs believed that they were doing the right thing by taking leadership over the animal farm whilst revolting against the neglectful farmer Mr. Jones.
This, in turn, inspired the other farm animals to join in on the revolution in the hopes of living peacefully, successfully, and contently. The bad; the animals begin plotting the rebellion by inciting the phosity and the commandments of old major thus persuading the other animals and propositioning them to believe in animalism. The ugly; the rebellion is taken from a thought and is thrust into aggressive action, this is evident when Mr. Jones neglects his duties one final time though starvation and anger the animals revolt by braking into the storage shed in search of food, mr jones in a drunken stupa awakes to find the animals of the farm stealing the food and begins to retaliate will brute force.
The animals reciprocate and ambush Mr. jones and his men, thus banishing them forever from the farm. The good the bad and the ugly occurs throughout history with dictators such as Hitler, Napoleon, Osama bin laden, saddam Hussein, Kim II Sung and Mao Zedong. Some would argue that they did great things for their countries they in sighted rebellions and revolutions they inspired people to believe in their principles but though their growing power they were corrupted which changed their persona thus made these men become dehumanized and to have no empathy for their fellow man. Which lead to mass murder leaving these men’s names to be remembered as evil men.
Although countries like Russia are no longer ruled by tyrannical leaders, millions of people from around the world continue to be oppressed by totalitarian governments. Orwell’s message is clear. If we want to prevent the generations to come from slipping back into a communistic regime, then we must allow students of the 21st century to have this timeless allegory included in their education.
Democracy in animal farm could you believe it? To think that George Orwell couldn’t get any better, he enforced the proposal of democracy in a totalitan environment. During old major’s speech, the award-winning boar had announced that “all animals are equal” this links directly to our society, how people have the freedom of speech, their own rights and are treated equally.
