When a farmer has fled away from his own estate, the animals take over. George Orwell portrays this in his dystopian novel Animal Farm. Portraying the Russian Revolution in 1917-1945, the animals of Manor farm are sick and tired of being harassed by their farmer, Mr. Jones. Later that day, the leader of the animals, Old Major, predicted that a rebellion will progress to overthrow the farm. When Major passes away a few nights after, Snowball and Napoleon take charge, but there’s a problem. Who will become the head leader? In this novel, Orwell demonstrates that power, when given to the wrong hands, can lead to greediness, chaos, corruption, and manipulation. The pigs want to manipulate and test out their power when the cows are full of milk. So, Napoleon, Snowball, and the rest of the pigs, had the plan of milking the cows and evenly distributing all the milk to the other animals. But after being done with milking the cows, Napoleon and Snowball decide that all the milk should be mixed in with the pigs’s apple mash with not a drop to spare for the rest of the other animals: “The milk and the windfall apples (and also the main crop of apples when they ripened) should be reserved for the pigs alone.” (Orwell 52-53). This quote …show more content…
The rule was mandatory, and if any animal were to go off duty, their food portions would lessen by half: “Napoleon announced that there would be work on Sunday afternoons as well. This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.” (Orwell 73). This quote demonstrates corruption in this scene as Napoleon forces the animals into doing work against their own will, and if they don’t, they will starve. He uses his power to lure the animals into working for him by using food as an advantage. With the power Napoleon has, he can bait them into doing his bidding and it influences the animals to do what he