Comparing Power In Animal Farm And The Wave By Todd Strasser

The corruptive nature of power can be observed in both novels Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945) and The Wave by Todd Strasser (1981). In the wise words of Lord Acton, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." (Phrase Finder, 2012) The simple nature of mankind is to want power and when man achieves this, he gets addicted, wants more and thus becomes corrupt. This exploitation of dominance relates to when the dictator loses his moral values and abuses power purely for his own benefit and loses sight of what the initial goals were. Even the best intentions, such as those that were only just formed in Animal Farm and The Wave, can be distorted by the basic human instinct of selfishness

Which is depicted when the initial harmless goals are lost and new intentions arise unrecognised. In the beginning, Ben Ross, a teacher with good intentions, was just trying to teach his students about why citizens of Germany followed corrupt orders. This later on turned into The Wave, which was a school experiment created by Ben Ross, to give his students a better understanding by giving them "a sampling, a taste of what life in Nazi Germany might have been like" (Todd Strasser, 2005, The Wave, pp. 81-82). The experiment was a success, probably too much of a success, as the students who were a part of it, took it very seriously and unknowingly created a dangerous cult like following throughout their school. This power created by the students easily drove them from their main goal which they started with: equality, to fascism. They become exposed to other desired outcomes which resultantly changed their fundamental goal. This is shown in The Wave, when the original goal of equality is diminished and students who were not a part of The Wave were treated very

Power causes the dictator to lose sight of his/her morals and good intentions thus resulting in causing corruption among themselves and also those around them. These aspects can be easily seen in Animal Farm and The Wave particularly when the dictators get too addicted to power and rationalises their treacherous actions as if to say “What I am doing is for your own good.” This manipulation of language demonstrates how the dictator takes advantage and wrongly uses power to justify his ways. The simple idea of power can cause addiction and corruption without anyone realising, which has been proven to end in very dangerous situations in both novels. Above all, power is just an obsessive scheme that ultimately causes inequality among the group, destroys relationships, leads to dictatorship and induces