Animal Farm Quote Analysis

As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” In a society, it is not only the citizen’s right, but it is their responsibility to stand up for what is right or to point out flaws in their society. In Animal Farm, when the animals were under the rule of the pigs, they underestimated themselves and ended up in a defenseless position very eerily similar to their position in Jones’s day because of their lack of faith in themselves. It was their responsibility as citizens to stand up to injustice, but because of their lack of faith in themselves, injustice overtook the farm. Expression is a powerful part of one’s responsibility to their society and can make great political impact.

Orwell displays this theme in the last sentence of the novel, after the pigs have made an alliance with the humans and destroyed the morals of their farm. “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” This happening was truly a travesty for the creatures of animals farm. However, it was themselves who failed to take responsibility when it was possible to correct their corrupt government. For example, Benjamin the donkey “-could read as well as any pig, but never exercised this faculty” (33). If Benjamin had helped Clover read the barn wall the many times that she asked him to, she could have realized and alerted the rest of the animals sooner. Even Benjaman himself could have at least attempted to save his friend Boxer from the slaughterer by noticing the changes made to the amendments and stood up to the pigs. It may have been lack of faith, lack of courage, or even carelessness that made Benjaman so brittle. For a society to function, all citizens must be taught to live with faith, courage, and