Complacency In Animal Farm

In the text Animal Farm, the animals have very complacent attitudes toward their commandments changing and how the ways of doing things on the farm are changing. The excerpt from the song “He Got Game” relates to the animals' attitude of complacency toward these things. One such line that relates to this is when the song states “Even murderers excused...” This line makes a connection with the part of the story when Boxer was sent away to be killed. The animals cared about him and they knew what they saw on the side of the cart he was put inside, but they were convinced by Squealer that it did not say “Horse Slaughterer” but it had just not been painted over yet. They accepted this and went on even though they saw what the cart read.

There were almost no questions asked after Squealer's explanation.
Another line from the song that relates to the animals' attitude of complacency is the line that states “One outta one million residents/being dissident...” Each time the commandments changed one of the animals would say, “Didn't this commandment say (something)?” However, each time they would question it Squealer had an explanation that they would simply accept and move on with. At first they would be genuinely confused and a little concerned, but in the end they would trust Squealer instead of trusting themselves. They most certainly cared but their complacent minds just shrugged it off when they got the first explanation that made even a granule of sense to them.
One more line in the song that truly relates back to the animals' complacency is, “It's time we stopped children/ what's that sound everybody look/ what's going down.” This ties back to the animals questioning the productiveness of their work and the better lives they were supposed to have.

This line of “He Got Game” relates to this by explaining how it is time that we stopped and looked at our situation and started thinking for ourselves what it is like and whether it is good or bad. In the story the animals would constantly wonder if their lives have truly gotten better since Jones had been drove out. They were always hungry and still worked like slaves. To these accusation however, as usual, Squealer had a bought of explanation and reason that all the animals would come to accept. He would use statistics such as “the grain production is 100% higher than it was when Jones was in charge” or “our water is much cleaner than before.” To the other animals, this sounded reasonable, so they agreed and continued their hard, unrewarding work. If the animals would have only stopped for a moment and thought that maybe they were right, things would have gone a different way. Sadly, although, their sheer lack of independence and the obvious presence of complacency would not allow them to have their own thoughts.

The song “He Got Game” relates to the animals' complacency in many ways. These are just a few of the ones that seemed more noticeable and significant. Most of them

were obvious in the first place, but these examples stuck out like sore thumbs. The relation to complacency was undeniable. In fact, it was impossible to ignore. Now the question is, how could even a speck of a sign of independence made this story take a turn in a different direction?