Animal Farm Rhetorical Analysis

In the book, “Animal Farm,” by George Orwell, the pigs used rational and emotional appeals to manipulate the others animals of the farm. Orwell uses emotional appeal, pathos, in most of the speeches throughout the story to persuade the animals by appealing to their emotions. Old Major gave his one and only speech in the beginning of the story containing an emotional appeal, which connected to the animals’ emotions. As Old Major was giving his speech, he said, “You young porkers who are sitting in front of me, everyone of you will scream your lives out at the block within a year” (Orwell, 30). This is significant because Old Major want to evoke sympathy for the pigs and the rest of the animals in the farm by noting that they only have their

short lives to live. He also used pathos by using the vocabulary of “everyone,” meaning it was directing to all the animals listening to his speech. By doing so, it allow Old Major to express the problems that were discussed about during the speech.

He was trying to keep the animals on the same page as him, which he must had to win the feelings of the audience, the animals, which he used pathos for. He discussed the hardships that the farm animals went through under Mr. Jone’s control, and called himself, “one of the lucky ones.” This was unusual because Old Major didn’t go through the hardships as the other animals, but still called himself one of them. Orwell uses rational appeal, logos, when facts were proven in the story. Logos is used when the top animals does none of the work, except for thinking of the farm and the need of food for the hard working animals that must be starving. Squealer used facts by stating, “Milk and apples (this has been proven by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of the pig” (Orwell 52). This is significant because Squealer used facts as a way to get his point in the animal’s mind although the fact wasn’t necessarily proven true. They used science as a way to manipulate the animals to thinking that the facts true. By doing this, the animals only rely on the pigs because of their knowledge because they do not know how to read or

write. This gives the pigs able to easily manipulate the other animals by giving facts that haven’t been proven by just using words such as, “science” and “proven.” By the use of emotional appeals and rational appeals shown in the story, it proves that the pig easily manipulate the other animals from the use of it.