Sort of Idealistic Dreams and Goals for Humanity - Book Report/Review Example

The Importance of Anthropomorphism in Animal Farm When George Orwell wrote his famous novel Animal Farm, the world had just undergone major change. It was 1945 and the world had just seen the end of the Second World War. Hitler had been defeated, Churchill had been voted out of office, Mussolini and President Roosevelt had just died. Stalin was the last of the great world leaders that had contributed to the end of the war, causing much of the world to view Russia and Stalin in a favorable light. However, Orwell saw a darker side to this reality, one in which Stalin was not the humanitarian he presented to the outside world. Within his novel, Animal Farm, he attempted to present this alternate view of reality through the characters and events that took place on a fictional farm. Everything associated with this farm is a symbol of something else. In The Literary Symbol by William York Tindall, symbol is defined as “the outward sign of an inward state” where ‘sign’ indicates a material object and ‘inward state’ refers to feelings, thoughts or a combination of the two (1955). When applied to the use of animals exhibiting human behavior, it is referred to as anthropomorphism, a tool that provided Orwell with the fictional protection he needed to share his less than popular ideas. To protect himself from a public that was then blind to the negative side of Russian politics while he was writing this novel, Orwell used anthropomorphism to represent real-life people in the characters of Napoleon, Old Major, Snowball and Squealer. In Animal Farm, the main character Napoleon is presented as having the same sort of idealistic dreams and goals for humanity that were expressed by Stalin in his early political years. Like Stalin, Napoleon the pig is seen to have incredible success early in the story as he leads the animals in a revolt to take over the farm, helps organize them to produce in larger quantities than they had under human management, manages the farm in an efficient way and aids the animals in protecting the farm from the invading human farmers. However, Napoleon begins to like the taste of power, and he begins changing the laws he himself wrote in order to allow himself and his close companions the space to enjoy the extra luxuries they’ve discovered. As each law is broken, though, it becomes necessary to break increasingly more laws and infringe even more upon the freedoms and rights of the other animals in order to keep the peace. Napoleon, as did Stalin in real life, does this with ever-increasing brutality as can be seen in his dealings with the hens in chapter 7. Despite agreeing early in the story that the sale of eggs is a form of murder, when the hens protested the resumption of egg sales, “Napoleon acted swiftly and ruthlessly. He ordered the hens’ rations to be stopped, and decreed that any animal giving so much as a grain of corn to a hen should be punished by death. The dogs saw to it that these orders were carried out. For five days the hens held out … Nine hens had died in the meantime. Their bodies were buried in the orchard, and it was given out that they had died of coccidiosis.” In the end, after he has managed to drive off or kill most of his friends and supporters, Napoleon the pig has changed so much that the other animals, as they look through the window at a dinner party Napoleon is hosting for some of the neighboring human farmers, can no longer tell his face from those of the humans he is associating with. A side by side comparison between Orwell’s character Napoleon the pig and the real-life person of Joseph Stalin reveals an almost mirror image between the human traits and behaviors of each individual, thus fully illustrating Orwell’s overall negative impression of Stalinist Russia and where he felt the major mistakes were made in an otherwise workable plan. George Lamont (1995) points out that Napoleon and Stalin share a similar weakness for public speaking, demonstrating a gruffness or coarse approach that is only brought to clearer light by the eloquence of their primary opposition. Napoleon the pig is confronted by the smooth-talking and intelligent pig Snowball while Stalin had to contend with Leon Trotsky. In addition, both Napoleon the pig and Stalin the Russian leader demonstrated a willingness to do anything in order to gain power, in the process proving themselves cruel, brutal and even willing to kill innocents as a means of reaching their goals. Where Napoleon had dogs to act as his impromptu yet brutally effective and completely loyal police force, Moses the raven to act as his spy and Squealer in a position akin to the U.S. spin doctors to help him control the animals, Stalin had the KGB, the sanctioned state church and his own propaganda machine. At the beginning of the novel, Napoleon sets out to honor the teachings of Old Major, a venerated and very wise old pig who dies shortly after telling the animals of his dreams for a better world for his fellow farm-mates. However, Napoleon deviates drastically from the true path originally laid out by the old pig to the eventual destruction of the dream. This is similar to the way in which Stalin set out to follow the teachings of Karl Marx regarding socialism, but allowed his own desire for power destroy the Russian dream. Thus, Orwell illustrates the flaw in the plan to be a failure to take into account the corruptibility of the human spirit in trying to establish a utopian socialist society. Old Major, of course, represents the venerated philosopher Karl Marx and his teachings regarding socialism as they were understood and interpreted in Russia. It is Old Major who incites the animal revolution to follow toward the beginning of the novel even though he dies before it actually takes place. The old pig does this by educating the other animals about the true nature of the world: “Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.” (ch. 1). Through this speech and other communications, Old Major speaks of the injustices committed upon the animal kingdom by mankind and the importance of throwing off the yolk of man’s influence if animals were ever going to be able to enjoy the bounty of their labors as they deserved. In the process of this one eloquent and well-thought-out speech, Old Major thus creates the concept of Animalism, which becomes the animals’ idea of a perfect society. The basic principles of Animalism become the first laws of the farm following the animal revolution: “No animal must live in a house, or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes, or drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco, or touch money, or engage in trade. All the habits of Man are evil. And above all, no animal must ever tyrannise over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers. No animal must ever kill any other animal. All animals are equal.” (ch. 1). Little growth is seen in this character as he dies three days later peacefully in his sleep; however, a close examination of his speech demonstrates something of an alternative motive of his own in that while he decries the abuses of mankind upon the animals, he also indicates his own life has been long and happy despite having existed entirely under the direction and management of humans. Like Napoleon’s relationship to Stalin, Old Major’s relationship with Karl Marx is unmistakable. There are several similarities between the founding principles of Animalism and Marxism. Old Major told the animals about his theory that the animals should be the only ones to profit from their own labors, keeping the fruits of that labor for their own survival rather than selling these labors for a ‘good-enough’ existence and allowing the humans to reap all the benefits. Marx proposed the workers of the world should unite to demand better conditions in return for their labors, that the wealthy were only wealthy as a result of their willingness to profit unjustifiably off of the backs of the laborers themselves. In both instances, these characters incited those they spoke with to unite and revolt against those in higher positions who controlled the distribution of wealth regardless of their actual proximity to the action involved. This is illustrated through both situations in that the speaker dies before the revolution begins. The significance of this is explored somewhat more extensively in Animal Farm then it had been applied to the real life situation of the time as the philosopher with the dream was unavailable to provide input, to call attention to those behaviors that were straying from the basic premise and to call a halt to the process when it veered wildly out of control. As a result, leaders had a great deal of room in which to deviate dangerously from the original concepts that would lead to the brave new world socialism was promising (Lamont, 1995). “To the extent that Animal Farm alludes to events of the Russian Revolution, the skull of Old Major … parallels the actual preservation of Lenin’s corpse in Red Square first in a simple vault and later, as though hiding the man’s mortal humanity behind a myth of omnipotence or saintliness, in a vast mausoleum” (Smyer, 1988, p. 85). Thus, the character is venerated in much the same way as idealist leaders were venerated in Russia to as little positive effect. Another important character in the story is Snowball, another pig, who provides Animal Farm with its own version of Leon Trotsky. At the beginning of the story, Napoleon and Snowball are characterized as being very similar in their basic beliefs and goals. Both pigs are depicted as whole-hearted converts to Old Major’s ideas of Animalism and both wish to do their utmost to further the cause within the confines of their farm. This, of course, required the reluctant acceptance of leadership positions despite the idea that they were working to build a society that was supposed to promote equality for all. Despite their similarities, it soon becomes obvious that the two pigs cannot work together successfully because of changes in their interpretations of how to bring necessary changes about. “Snowball and Napoleon were by far the most active in the debates. But it was noticed that these two were never in agreement: whatever suggestion either of them made, the other could be counted to oppose it” (ch. 5). Although Snowball takes a proactive approach to the various situations presented, forming committees and clubs as a means of encouraging the other animals to take an active role in the governing of the farm, Napoleon shows increasing interest in gaining more power for himself, quickly forgetting his thoughts of making a better life for all the animals on the farm. Since Snowball is able to prove he is the better speaker of the two pigs as well as the more clever, Napoleon is forced to resort to terror, which he is more than willing to do, as a means of gaining the advantage over his better opponent. Instead of working on committees, Napoleon concentrates on raising and training specialized guard dogs he’s stolen from a litter and kept loyal only to him. Napoleon also embarks on a propaganda campaign designed to smear Snowball’s name among the other animals, constantly blaming Snowball for anything that goes wrong on the farm. “Whenever anything went wrong it became usual to attribute it to Snowball” (ch. 5). Constantly employing these types of tactics, Napoleon eventually succeeds in chasing Snowball off the farm. Trotskian tendencies abound in the character of Snowball throughout the novel. Like Trotsky, Snowball is young, smart and idealistic with a good sense for public speaking. True to the ideals of Animalism, Snowball, like Trotsky, truly held to his belief that life could be made better for all of the animals on the farm and worked diligently to bring that dream about. He struggled valiantly against what he saw as Napoleon’s corruption of the ideal and its eventual inevitable destruction as a result of this corruption, but was unable to fully anticipate the depths to which Napoleon was willing to sink in order to have his own way. When Snowball was chased from the farm by Napoleon’s dogs, in much the same way that Trotsky was chased from Russia by Lenin’s KGB, he worked to spread the ideas of Animalism as much as he could in the outer world beyond the gates of the Animal Farm (Lamont, 1995). Ominously, Snowball eventually disappears from the story altogether, except as a threat against the misbehavior of young animals and a continued scapegoat for conspiracies hatched among the animals against the farm. There are plenty of examples of this type of use. Even without his presence on the farm, Snowball is seen to be the power behind the show trial of four pigs who claimed to have been meeting with Snowball since his expulsion, resulting in their throats being torn out by the dogs as punishment for working against Napoleon. “In a terrible voice, Napoleon demanded whether any other animal had anything to confess. The three hens who had been the ringleaders in the attempted rebellion over the eggs now came forward and stated that Snowball had appeared to them in a dream and incited them to disobey Napoleon’s orders.” They were also killed as a result of their connection to the Snowball/Trotsky movement. This form of ‘justice’ deserved and ‘justice’ carried out is exactly the form of ‘justice’ Orwell saw taking place in Russia among the supporters of Trotsky under Stalin’s rule. These supporters were hunted down and murdered by Stalin’s KGB and others rather than allow them to incite any kind of organized rebellion. As has been mentioned, both Stalin and Napoleon were lacking in speaking skills, which they each made up for with the development of their own personal propaganda machines. For Napoleon, this machine existed in the form of the pig Squealer. Squealer has a healthy grasp of the art of language, skillfully using rhetoric to convince the other animals of the rightness of Napoleon’s directives either through outright falsehoods or convoluted misdirection. Following the distressing expulsion of Snowball from the farm and the establishment of a new form of farm management, Squealer is the one who circulates among the animals to calm them and smooth the rough patches and resentment against Napoleon. “Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure. On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?” (ch. 5). This type of language use comes in handy by the end of the novel, when Squealer finds himself working to explain away the fact that Boxer, the hard-working old horse, was removed from the farm in a van marked as belonging to the local slaughterer. “Surely, he cried indignantly, whisking his tail and skipping from side to side, surely they knew their beloved Leader, Comrade Napoleon, better than that? But the explanation was really very simple. The van had previously been the property of the knacker, and had been bought by the veterinary surgeon, who had not yet painted the old name out. … The animals were enormously relieved to hear this … and the sorrow that they felt for their comrade’s death was tempered by the thought that at least he had died happy” (ch. 9). In changing the commandments, Squealer brings forward the idea that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” “In this simple but effective way, Orwell presents the tragedy and confusion of thought control to the extent that one seems better off simply believing that Napoleon is always right” (Hassani, 2005). Squealer’s real-life counterpart is the Russian newspaper Pravda, which was used by Stalin to broadcast his message throughout Russia. “It was through Pravda that the people of Russia were made to believe that Stalin’s gaining more wealth and power was absolutely necessary for all. All of Stalin’s success was based on how well Pravda could distort the truth” (“Pravda vs. Squealer”, 2001). The Pravda was able to convince the people of Russia that they were better off under Stalin in all the important parts of life by using simplified language to limit the terms of the discussion and by using overly complicated language to confuse the issues, skillfully blending the two for maximum confusion effect. Comparing Squealer to the Pravda, Lamont says Squealer has a big mouth and enjoys using it. He uses this skill to convince animals to believe in his words and to follow Napoleon’s lead. He also uses this skill to subtly change the commandments in such a way that they are familiar to what the animals remember, but manage to convey completely different meanings from what was originally intended. Because there is no record of what the laws originally stated for the animals to remind themselves of the specific details, there is no way they can prove that the laws have been altered. The propaganda machine of the Lenin/Stalin government also worked diligently to use language that supported the image of their chosen leader and were willing to use any lie necessary to convince the people to follow him. Also like Squealer, the Pravda was able to capitalize on the relative illiterate nature of the general population as a means of controlling them and forcing them to believe what was desired at the time (Lamont, 1995). Through these various characters and the traits he builds in them, Orwell is able to create Russia in miniature, exploring the ways in which Stalin was able to gain and then keep power despite growing evidence that the experiment was not succeeding. Rather than blame socialism, Orwell was struggling to demonstrate how the abuse of power and position, coupled with greed and ruthlessness, forced the destruction and resulting devastation that was experienced. Although only the very general characteristics have been discussed here, there are several other ways in which each of these characters demonstrates positive and negative aspects of each of their real-life counterparts, including how they worked to help or hinder the socialist movement. In addition to the characters, the actions, events, buildings and auxiliary characters provide further insights as to Orwell’s viewpoint regarding the Russian Revolution as it has been outlined within the interplay of these principle characters. Works Cited Hassani, Anna. “Animal Farm: George Orwell.” Book Reviews. Nabou.com. June 16, 2006 < http://bookreviews.nabou.com/reviews/animalfarm.html> Lamont, George J. “Animal Farm: Comparison of Characters to Russian Revolution.” Charles’ George Orwell Links. 1995. June 16, 2006 Orwell, George. Animal Farm. New York: Signet Classics, 2004. “Pravda vs. Squealer.” Animal Farm. August 1, 2001. June 16, 2006 < http://www.guysboroughacademy.ednet.ns.ca/AnimalFarm/page2stage/> Smyer, Richard I. Animal Farm: A Student’s Companion to the Novel. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988. Tindall, William York. The Literary Symbol. Bloomington, IN: Columbia University, 1955. Read More