Cameron Buckles
Teacher
Adv Comm
May 9, 2016
Spinning Tales/Tails Whether it be selling a knife that can cut through a work boot or convincing the masses that oppression will be good for them, propaganda can come in handy. From the U.S. using Uncle Sam’s index finger to motivate citizens to join the war, or the hammer and sickle on the Soviet Union’s flag meant to appeal to the “working class,” those that use propaganda have one goal in mind—to get you to buy in to whatever it is they’re selling. Joseph Stalin was quite fond of propaganda, and without it he may not have come to power so quickly, or at all for that matter. George Orwell’s Animal Farm is quite critical of Stalin’s actions and policies, and through the character Squealer, a pig that can spin a tale and shake his own in the process, Orwell exposes Stalin’s duplicitous ways and shows just how far those in charge will go to get people to
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Once Snowball is gone, he knows the animals will buy into what Squealer tells them; due to the pigs “superior knowledge[…]it was natural that they assume leadership” (Orwell 27-28), so with Snowball exiled, who was his (Napoleon’s) only competition in the pig department, who else is there to follow but Napoleon? With no one left to threaten his role as leader, he begins changing rules without giving the animals any sort of rhyme or reason for doing so and leaves it up to Squealer to “explain the new arrangement[s] to the others” (Orwell 55). At that point, Napoleon knows he can get away with whatever he wants as long as Squealer delivers on his end and turns “black into white” (which just so happen to be the same colors as the very thing he is an allegory of—a newspaper). And once Napoleon starts scheming and Squealer starts speaking, the propaganda show