Character Analysis Of Napoleon In Animal Farm

Napoleon became my least favorite character in the book, Animal Farm, because he is a controlling, cold-blooded, murdering hypocrite. One way that shows Napoleon is controlling is when he uses his guard dogs to intimidate the animals into agreeing, or at least not object out loud with what he says. A quotation that shows this is “Four young porkers in the front row uttered shrill squeals of disapproval. . . the dogs sitting round Napoleon let out deep, menacing growls, and the pigs fell silent and sat down again” (Orwell 54). When Napoleon ended Sunday morning Meetings and debates, four pigs questioned and protested, but instead of listening to their thoughts, Napoleon used his guard dogs to scare them into keeping quiet. This portrays him

controlling the animals by threatening them with his dogs, and for fear of losing their lives, the animals do not dare challenge the authority of Napoleon. The actions of his controlling personality are not limited to just the farm animals, but also applies to his guard dogs. He controls the nine dogs to do his bidding by raising them when they were young and misusing their loyalty to him for wicked purposes. Napoleon is also a cold-blooded murderer because he defied a commandment that no animal shall kill another animal and ordered the slaughtering of his fellow animal comrades. In this excerpt, “They were all slain on the spot. And so the tale of confessions and executions went on, until there was a pile of corpses lying before Napoleon's feet and the air was heavy with the smell of blood, which had been unknown there since the expulsion of Jones” (84), it shows Napoleon’s ruthlessness. The animals were confessing to crimes they have committed and Napoleon kills all of them on the spot without giving them a second chance to repent.

Napoleon and the executed victims were of the same kind: animals, but because they confessed to be associated with Snowball, no matter how minor the crime was, they were still put to death. To order the execution of the animals that once had the same goals and purposes as you, just reveals Napoleon’s cold, unforgiving nature. Another trait that Napoleon has, is his hypocrisy. “They had thought the Fifth Commandment was "No animal shall drink alcohol," but there were two words that they had forgotten. Actually the Commandment read: "No animal shall drink alcohol to excess" (109). This passage from the novel displays Napoleon’s hypocrisy because the original commandment does not have the words “to excess,” it was added so that Napoleon could manipulate the animals into thinking that whatever he does is right. Earlier in the story, Napoleon made a decree that if any of the animals drink alcohol, they will be punished by death, but later, he proceeds to drink alcohol anyways. In addition to drinking alcohol, he also takes an area that was meant for retired animals and uses it to sow barley to make

alcohol. This commandment was not the only one that Napoleon changed to accommodate him, the other ones were changed so that an animal, which is just the pigs can sleep in a bed as long it did not have any sheets, and animals were not supposed to engage in trade, but Napoleon does so anyways with the neighboring farms. When he executed the animals, he disobeyed a commandment which was no animal shall kill another animal, but to make it seem like he was not doing anything wrong, he added the words without cause to the commandment. These quotations from the novel show the many ways how Napoleon is a dictating, cold-blooded murdering, hypocrite by giving you examples when he terrorized the animals, killed them in cold blood, and twisted their minds into thinking that whatever he does is right.