Abuse Of Power In Animal Farm By George Orwell

Can you imagine what life would be like living under the rule of a dictator pig? The animals in Animal Farm by George Orwell unfortunately experience this first hand. In the novel, the farm animals rebel against their owner and drive him out, and thus Manor Farm is renamed Animal Farm and the animals begin to govern themselves. They all agree that the smartest animal should be considered the leader, therefore Snowball and Napoleon, both pigs, are put in charge. However, as the story goes along, Napoleon exiles Snowball and becomes corrupted with power, and despite claiming that everyone is equal, Napoleon lives in luxury while the rest suffer under his rule. In reality, the animals should be the ones blamed for allowing Napoleon to rule over them.

To start, passiveness to Napoleon’s tyrannical power prevents the animals from taking action.

First of all, Napoleon inflicts fear in the animals. He is able to cut all of the hens’ rations when they rebelled, and publicly execute fellow animals free-of-charge. To clarify, an excerpt from the book states: “…there was a pile of corpses lying before Napoleon’s feet and the air was heavy with the smell of blood” (p. 84). If the animals attempt to rebel, Napoleon can easily retaliate with his guard dogs, and if he decides not to kill them, he can abuse and neglect them afterwards. Secondly, a few animals are smart enough to react, but do nothing. Characters such as Benjamin, Clover, and Muriel are shown reading multiple times throughout the story. For instance, Benjamin yells, “Fools! Do you not see what is written on the side of that van?” (p. 122). The smarter animals are obviously capable of coming up with a plan, yet do nothing due to their fear of Napoleon and his reckless behavior. To conclude, because Napoleon rules Animal Farm with an iron fist, the smarter animals are unable to rebel, as they are too passive and

afraid.

In addition, ignorance and fierce loyalty to Napoleon prevents the smarter animals from receiving help from the less intelligent animals residing on the farm. To begin, Boxer, for one, is possibly the most loyal and naïve. He views Napoleon as a heroic figure and will listen to Squealer whenever he mentions him. “His two slogans, ‘I will work harder’ and ‘Napoleon is always right’ seemed to him a sufficient answer to all problems” (p. 61) shows just how ignorant Boxer is. He is the only one who can kill a dog, but he is obviously not intelligent enough to realize Napoleon’s antics. Other animals may catch on along the way, but none of them are as strong as Boxer is to be able to fight a dog, let alone multiple dogs. Moreover, animals are willing to listen to and believe anything Napoleon has to say. In fact, Boxer is attacked for questioning him, so afterwards, animals would listen to him unquestionably. For example, they believe him when he claims Snowball knocked the windmill over, as the book says: “It seemed to them as though Snowball were some kind of invisible influence…” (p. 79). The animals, because they fear him, are willing to believe anything Napoleon has to say, no matter how absurd it may sound. Napoleon does not even have to include factual evidence in his claims, because Squealer and the dogs are enough to drive the farm animals into believing him. In conclusion, because of Squealer’s propaganda, everyone was following Napoleon like baby ducks, so therefore it would have been difficult to convince them to rebel.
Obviously, the ones receiving the blame should be the farm animals, and not Napoleon for his tyrannical rule. Much like in our world, in the Russian Revolution, the common people had the power to overtake Czar Nicolas II, and yet they didn’t do much about Joseph Stalin, who remained in power until his death from natural causes. In this case, if the animals were able to drive out a gun-bearing human, why did they not at least attempt to overthrow Napoleon?