George Orwell "Animal Farm"

Major provides animals with scapegoat. In the nature of individual the image of an enemy excites aggressiveness but in the dimensions of the crowd the hostility increases thousands times. S.Moskovichy wrote in his book ‘The machine that creates Gods’, that ‘society is ruled by passions on which one should play and even stimulate them in order to have an opportunity to rule them and to subordinate to intellect’. Having read that episode we don’t pay attention to it’s deep psychological sense, but simply enjoy the humor with which the author speaks of it.

Orwell uses very popular device he gives the description of the character and at the end he gives a short remark which completely destroy the created image: ‘Old Major was so highly regarded on the farm that everyone was quite ready to lose an hours sleep in order to hear what he had to say... they nestled down inside it and promptly fell asleep’,’she purred contentedly throughout Majors speech without listerning to a word of what he was saying’. He uses the same device in the situation when Old Major is telling the animals about the song : ‘Many years ago when I was a little pig, my mother and other sows used to sing an old song of which they knew only the tune and the first three words I had known that tune in infancy , but it had long since past out of my mind, last night however it came back to me in my dream’. The reader is carefully prepared to hear some kind of patriotic march but instead of that the author in one sentence breaks down the created image: ‘It was a stirring tune something between ‘Clementine’ and ‘La Cucaracha’.Through those short remarks we learn the attitude the author towards what is going on in his novel. He laughs at his heroes pretending that the things he speaks about to be very important while making the reader understand the contrary thing.We can see hear again an integral part of any kind of humour-incongruity between the reality and the situation as it is said to be. The lack of coherance between things in it’s turn lead to the very invisible boundary between comedy and tragedy.

Orwell’s novel is always balancing between tragedy and comedy. In Animal Farm Orwell is exposing the selfish power-hunger of the few behind a collectivist rhetoric used to gull the many . And in at least two Orwell’s allegorical exposure is also an exposure of allegory. Because the surface fiction tends to be considered of lesser importance than the implied meaning , allegory is inherently hierarchical , and the insistence on the dominant meaning makes it an authoritarian mode.

If allegory tends to subordinate narrative to thesis, the structure of allegory, it’s dualistic form, can be emphasized to restore a balance between fictional events and conceptual massage. In Animal Farm there are signs of a balance struck between satiric devices allegorically martialed to expose and assault a dangerous political myth and collateral apolitical elements — the latter akin to the ‘solid objects and useless scraps of information’.

Orwell allows the reader to fix disgust at cruelty, torture and violence on one leading character—Napoleon. The way Orwell presents the figure is structural, in that the figure of the Napoleon clarifies his political intent for the reader. There is no doubt about the way the reader feels toward Napoleon, but Orwell’s handling of him is all the more effective for combining ‘humor with the disgust’.’Napoleon was a large, rather fierce looking Berkshire boar, the only Berkshire on the farm, not much of a talker but with the reputation for going his own way’.Orwell presents Napoleon to us in ways they are, at first amusing as, for example, in the scene where he shows his pretended disdain at Snowball’s plans for the windmill, by lifting his leg and urinating on the chalked floor. ‘One day ,however, he arrived unexpectedly to examine the plans. He walked heavily round the shed, looked closely at every detail of the plans and snuffed at them once or twice, then stood for a little while contemplating them out of the corner of his eye; then suddenly he lifted his leg, urinated over the plans and walked out without uttering a word.’ The increasing tension of description is broken down immediately this makes the reader smile. Besides the author speaks of Napoleon’s ridiculous deeds in such a natural way, as that is the normal kind of behavior that we just can’t stand laughing. ‘Napoleon produced no schemes of his own, but said quietly that Snowball’s would come to nothing’. Napoleon is seen to have no respect for Snowball who creates the plans. This is most apparent in his urinating on them which emphasises his brutal and uncivilised character. Animals urinate on objects to mark their territory. This is symbolic as Napoleon later takes the idea for the windmill as his own.

On the allegorical level the differing views of socialism held by Trotsky and Stalin are apparent. In contrast with Snowball’s speeches, Napoleon merely makes the minimum response and when he does speak it is usually to criticise Snowball. Speech becomes less and less important to Napoleon. The sheep with their mindless bleating effectively silence the opposing opinions as no-one else can be heard. ‘ It was noticed that they were specially liable to break ‘Four legs good, two legs bad’ in the crucial moments of Snowball’s speeches. Snowball’s reduction of Animalism for the benefit of stupider animals and the way the sheep mindlessly take it up , parodies the way socialist ideology reduces itself to simply formulas that everyone can understand, but which stop any kind of thought. In the Communist Manifesto, for example, there is the following sentence : ‘The theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: ‘Abolition of private property’’. Set this beside the basic principle of Animalism: ‘Four legs good, two legs bad’. Orwell’s feelings about dangers of over simplification are clear. ‘The more short the statement is the more it is deprived from any kind of provement, the more it influences the crowd. The statement exert influence only if it is repeated very often, in the same words’. Napoleon said that ‘there is only one figure of the theory of orators art,which deserves attention —repetition. By the means of repetition an idea installs in the minds so deeply, that at last it is considered to be the proved truth.

What the truth is? The Russian dictionary gives the difinition of truth as:the truth is ,what corresponds to the reality. But is it always so? Very often it happens so that we exept as the true the false things which we want to be true, or the things that someone whant us to exept. That is one of the most intresting perculiarities of man’s psychology, that Orwell ridicules.There is one univerce truth , but the man has a strange habit to purvert truth.

Napoleon appears to have gained the support of dogs and sheep and is helped by the fickle nature of the crowd.

From the start it seems, Napoleon turns events to his own advantage. When the farm is attacked in the ‘Battle of Cowshed’, Napoleon is nowhere to be seen. Cowardice is hinted ft and his readiness to rewrite history later in the novel shows the ways in which Napoleon is prepared to twist the truth for his own ends. The Seven Commandments in which are condified the ethnical absolutes of the new order, are perverted throughout the book to suit his aims.

There is an interesting thing to notice about Seven Commandments. That is an important device to use the ‘lucky number’ to deepen the impression of animals misfortune. Every time the changing of the commandment takes place, we see an example of how the political power , as Orwell sees it, is prepared to alter the past in peoples minds, if the past prevents it from doing what he wishes to do. Firstly the fourth commandment is altered in order that pigs could sleep comfortably in warm beds. A simple addition of two words does it. ‘read me the fourth commandment. Does it not say something about sleeping in beds? With some difficulty Muriel spelt it out. ‘It says that ‘ no animal shall sleep in the bed with sheets’’. Whenever the pigs infringe one of Major’s commandments, Squealer is sent to convince the other animals that that is the correct interpretation . ‘you didn’t suppose , surely, that there was ever a ruling against beds? A bed merely means the place to sleep in. A pile of straw in a stall is a bed, properly regarded. The rule was against sheets, which are a human invention’.Napoleon secures his rule through an unpleasant mix of lies distortion and hypocrisy / there are two scenes where Napoleon’s cruelty and cold violence are shown in all their horror : the scene of the trials and the episode where Boxer is brought to the knacker’s. The veil of mockery is drown aside. In these episodes humour is absent, the stark reality of Napoleons hunger for power, and the cruelty< and death it involves are presented. Orwell reminds of the ‘heavy’ stink of blood, and associates that smell with Napoleon.