Hyunsoo Kang

Mrs. Marsella-Jensen

English 10 Honors, Period 1

13 March 2017

Animal Farm: Rough Draft #1

Dating back to the Russian Revolution, a dictator named Tsar had complete power over a

great amount of Russians due to force and use of fear. No ordinary person would protest against

him because they feared that they would be exiled or executed. The outcomes of his use of force

resulted in many Russians having to act like slaves. Some may say that the Russians appeared to

look like an animals on a farm working to help support the Tsar, instead of working. During

those times, George Orwell, the author of the novel Animal Farm, realized that the Russians

depicted farm animals because of the way they were treated. Since he objected to the fact that

corrupted leaders had the ability to control peasants lives, he wrote a novel ridiculing humans.

He attempted to present readers of the irrationality of how poorly lower class Russians were

treated by explaining, through the characters of Animal Farm, that humans are easily deceived by

a superior leader through the use of propaganda techniques such as faulty reasoning, fear, and

logical fallacies.

Through the use of faulty reasoning, Old Major explains to the animals that the true

reason behind their enslavement results from humans. Since the animals are constantly forced to

work, they lack freedom, which they strive for. To encourage other animals to rise against their

human owners, Old Major proclaims, Remove man Man from the scene, and the root cause of

hunger and overwork is abolished for ever (Orwell 5). The animals believe that in order to

avoid a huge issue such as enslavement from continuing, they must start at the roots of the
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issue, which in this case is Mr. Jones, their owner. This gives the animals the motivation to gain

enough courage to have the thought of finally overthrowing Jones. To continue flourishing the

animals dreams, Old Major gives the animals a vision of what life would be like without the

disturbance of Mr. Jones and his friends. He tells them that once they get rid of Jones, the

animals will be able to work less to gain food for the humans, and instead gain food for

themselves. Additionally, the mentioning of overworking and hunger becoming abolished,

allow the animals to use the motivation of equality to overcome their conflicts against Jones. The

equal division of food and resources that they gained from working, gives the animals an excuse

to finally want to kick out Jones from the farm. At the end of the meeting, the animals leave with

the plan of overthrowing Jones to finally gain the freedom they have been striving for.

Squealer, an accomplice of the dictator also known as Napoleon, uses fear to make the

animals believe that the idea of being controlled by a corrupt animal leader, is better than having

a human leader. Although majority of the animals realize that they had less stress with Jones,

they choose to believe that the idea of having freedom is more beneficial to them. Squealer

persuades the other animals to believe in what he believes by saying, Jones would come back!

Yes. Jones would come back! Surely, comrades, cried Squealer almost pleadingly, skipping

from side to side and whisking his tail, surely there is no one among you who wants to see Jones

come back? (31). The main reason as to why the other animals have not resisted Napoleon and

Squealer was because they were worried that they would lose their new profound freedom. Not

only does having a human leader result in the loss of freedom, however, the animals would be

embarrassed for being unable to defeat the humans from returning to their farm. Being controlled

by a human shows other farms that the animals were unable to produce food without human

leaders, that initially do not have the ability to perform the same actions as the animals could do.
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Using the fear of nearly being humiliated by the idea of returning to a human for support results

in many animals not having enough courage to stand up against their current corrupt animal

leaders.

Due to the many disastrous events that were occurring, Napoleon convinced the other that

those events occurred due to Snowball, which they believed to be true because the animals

disliked him. Napoleon used logical fallacies to connect the idea that since Snowball was

atrocious and the disastrous events were chaotic, Snowball caused the events as a sign of him

returning soon to the farm. One of the events where the animals blamed Snowball was, when

the key of the of the storeshed was lost, the whole farm was convinced that Snowball had thrown

it down the well. Curiously enough, they went on believing this even after the mislaid key was

found under a sack of meal (70). The quotation demonstrates a situation where the animals were

convinced Snowball intentionally stole a key from the farm, despite the fact that they were able

to recover it under their meal. Since Snowball was already thought of as a traitor to many of the

other animals on the farm, due to Napoleon's speeches, without any exact evidence of traces

from Snowball, the other animals assumed that he was the reason behind many of their

downfalls. This clearly explains that Napoleon and Squealer were able to persuade the other

animals with little as to no exact evidence of Snowballs presence. As long as the corrupted

leaders were able to keep the attention of the other animals to them, they believed that through

logical fallacies, they would be able to continue blaming Snowball for disastrous events that

were occurring. However, the animals one track mind to follow what ever Napoleon said would

become a great advantage to him and Squealer.

The never ending result of a corrupted leader being able to captivate their audiences

attention is due to the many different propaganda techniques that are used. How Orwell uses
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propaganda within the animals in the novel is a demonstration of how humans are easily

corrupted by society and the supporters of the corrupted leader are usually easily deceived into

believing whatever their leader has said. He shows how a simple human can gain enough power

to have the ability to control a population, without having the trouble of including evidence in

their speeches. As a response to this issue, Orwell ridicules the corrupted leaders for their

decisions on certain debacles that occur. For instance, the pigs in Animal Farm as well as the

humans are shown to look alike at the end because they are both corrupted leaders. Making fun

of the fact that a human could look like a pig amuses many readers because the only thing they

can see about the leaders appearances is how absolute power completely changed them to

become more like pigs. Pigs are usually described as lazy or appalling, whom Orwell compares

humans to. Not only does Orwell ridicule how easily a human can become corrupt, but he also

explains how supporters of corrupted leaders are easily deceived due to their inability to stand

up for themselves. Russians, which consists mostly of the younger class, usually can not resist

their leaders due to their fear of being exiled or executed. Although that is a good reason to avoid

protests, Orwell shows how supporters can slowly become more trusting in their leaders, and

eventually believe them with no other explanation or evidence. As a result, they believe anything

their leaders tell them to do because their trust is put in them. Orwell belittles humans for how

absolute power corrupts absolutely or their lack of confidence to withstand scrutiny.