Satire Animal Farm

Animal Farm Essay George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a satirical piece about the Russian Revolution, exemplifies a farm as a stand-in for Stalin’s communist rule, and the resulting problems. The story represents the manipulation of the people and the power plays involved and displays the unjust circumstances that the common people live with. In Animal Farm, the pigs keep up their position of power through several tactics, including violent threats, propaganda, and education and food restrictions. The pigs utilize the aggressive guard dogs’ attacks for a fear factor, continual propaganda and rewriting of the rules, exclusive education, and restrictions on food to inflict inferiority amongst the other animals. The pigs maintain power through the

When the animals notice the pigs are hoarding food, Squealer compellingly emphasizes, “You do not imagine…that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness? … Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back!” (48). By telling the animals that Jones will come back, Squealer threatens the return of a more difficult life, hoping the animals put their trust in the pigs. Squealers’ dismissal of their assumptions about the pigs’ actions with his rhetorical questions indicates the manipulation and ignorance of the animals. Not only do the pigs make up excuses, but they also edit the original commandments. And as some of the smarter animals begin to notice, “Squealer soon convince[s] them that their memories had been at fault” (49). Squealer tells the animals they are not remembering them properly, and the animals, unable to read and know any better, believe they did misremember. This allows the pigs to continue rewriting the rules as they please, so the rules fit and justify their actions within power, raising no

The pigs keep the bulk of it for themselves, while the rest suffer. When the pigs order the hens to give up their eggs, they rebel. Napoleon then orders their “rations be stopped, and decreed that any animal giving so much as a grain of corn to a hen should be punished” (38). The pigs take away food from any animals against their wishes, putting their lives in jeopardy if they do not conform. The hens are forced to do as Napoleon says to survive. The severity of the threatened item - food - reveals just how far the pigs are willing to go to keep their power, and Orwell connects this to Stalin’s role in preventing the people from the ability to do anything other than work to earn their rations and stay alive. The pigs’ ability to control rations and reduce them at any time is a massive enabler for their continual