The Manipulation Enigma of a Deceiver
Animal Farm, by George Orwell, is a book filled with sly persuasion and propaganda. Squealer, Napoleon’s propagandist, uses many different techniques to twist information in order to mislead the animals to believe the pigs’ false stories. Squealer used the persuasive propaganda techniques of pathos and ethos. By using these techniques, Squealer effectively tricked all the animals into Napoleon’s scheme of complete control.
Squealer uses pathos to alter the animal's’ thoughts and memories of what has happened. He uses this to make them succumb to his emotional retelling of the story of the Battle of Cowshed. Squealer says to the animals, “Snowball was in league with Jones from the very start!... attempted… to get us defeated and destroyed at the Battle of Cowshed.”(79) Squealer persuades them that Snowball has been outlawed because he was never their “comrade” in the first place. Squealer says that Snowball had been working with Jones, which is a big hit on the animal's emotional scale because of the hatred brooded within them for Jones. Squealer appeals to the animals’ emotion of betrayal. By using pathos,
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He uses their very own “Comrade Napoleon” in his stories to convince the animals even further that these tales were true. Squealer says to the animals, “Snowball… would have succeeded if it had not been for our heroic Leader, Comrade Napoleon… Comrade Napoleon… has stated categorically… that Snowball was Jones’s agent from the very beginning.”(80-81) By just putting Napoleon in his story, Squealer added a lot of persuasion to his version of the story. Immediately after he talked of Napoleon, Boxer said that Napoleon is always right, so this must be right. He uses Napoleon’s position and influence on the animals to show that Snowball was traitor. All in all, Squealer uses Napoleon’s prestige and role to persuade the animals of Snowball’s