The Manipulation of Language used in Brave New World and Animal Farm - Essay Example

In doing so, there is chaos and disturbance which gives the reader an apocalyptic image of the world. For example, in Brave New World the society is made to conform to a certain culture and belief system. It is trained into believing that everyone is destined to be in the role that they have been placed into, by influence as the Director of Hatcheries in the novel puts it: "that is the secret of happiness and virtue - liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny.

” (Huxley, Ch. 1. 1946). The Director of Hatcheries uses his language to keep all the lower classes content with what they had and to explain to them that that was the only way that they could lead a life. Mustapha Mond believes that the future idealistic world will consist of conditioned and processed humans who will submit to the social conventionality. Hence, he governs a very surreal image of humans who are driven away from books and obliged to chase after science. Mond uses his knowledge of the Bible and language of Shakespeare to control a totalitarian state.

He makes language a paradox for others, so much so that when John quotes the words from The Tempest, “brave new world”, there is more hostility involved in it than awe because Mustapha Mond creates the World State to look at things in such a manner. Likewise, the language of the pigs becomes ridiculously elitist, controlling, incoherent and a meandering discourse when they speak. This technique highlights the usurpation of power as one of the dominant themes of the novel. The language controls the reality.

The linguistic skills of the pigs overpower the undersized language of the rest of the animals. The novel opens with the narrative that quickly ascertains the dominance of language through the speech of old Major who “was so highly regarded on the farm that everyone was quite ready to lose an hour’s sleep in order to hear what he had to say” (Orwell, Ch.1. 1954). This sets an authoritative and paternal language structure which is hammered into the other animals like a mandatory act or law even after his death: “Our lives are miserable, laborious and short.

We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength; and the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth. But is this simply part of the order of nature?

” (Orwell, Ch.1. 1954) This is probably the most ironic speech in the novel. What Old Major believes he and his fellow animal kingdom has witnessed about humans, the animals have to undergo under the pigs’ rule after Old Major’s departure. When Orwell says “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity” (Orwell, PE, 1947, para 13) he means precisely under these circumstances. He emphasizes that dictatorship ruins the language of a particular region according to history. The pigs are insincere towards their fellow