Corruption In The Great Gatsby And Animal Farm

The Great Gatsby and Animal Farm: Different Yet the Same
F. Scott Fitzgerald and George Orwell’s novels are historical classics. Grabbing the reader's attention from the beginning, the interesting plot is more than just an entertaining read as these two novels showcase the time period in which they are written. Although written on different topics, they offer a similar message about corruption and the roles that people play in the quest for power. Animal Farm and The Great Gatsby show similarities through their critiques on the history of their novels, and the overarching theme but their characters in power roles have different traits showing that corruption can be due to multiple reasons. Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, critics the 1920s

Orwell, “ma[de] the clever and convincing case that the Soviets’ wartime conduct was no merely ephemeral issue. The fable delivered a persuasive and easily understood indictment of the Russian Revolution itself (Rodden & Rossi 20). Orwell considered his novel as, “a satire on the Russian Revolution” (Orwell vii), using a farm revolution led by the animals to parallel the Russian Revolution and the idea that any “‘violent conspiratorial revolution, led by unconsciously power-hungry people’, could only lead to a change in masters” (Orwell vii). The moral of the story that Orwell was trying to portray is that while revolutions may be necessary for improvement, the public must be alert and recognize when the government is no longer improving and consequently throw them out of power (Orwell vii). Animal Farm is an easy to follow novel on what the Russian Revolution was. It is a novel about the animals of Manor farm starting a revolution to throw out the farmer, Mr. Jones who subjects the animals to brutal living conditions. The idea of the revolution is started by the pig Old Major in the hopes that all animals will be equal. After he dies the other pigs continue with Old Major's dream. What starts out as a fight for equality quickly turns into a power struggle between the leader pig's Snowball and Napoleon and a shift to inequality as the pigs are seen as superior. The pigs represent the government leaders while the rest of the farm animals are the working class. The animals are easily persuaded by the pigs, either through supposed intellect or extreme violence, therefore, they do not see that they are not only being used but that their living conditions become the same if not worse then before the revolution. This is the point Orwell was trying to make in terms of the Russian Revolution, showing that power roles