George Orwell's Animal Farm

The Power of Words

In 1946 George Orwell wrote the novel, Animal Farm. In this book, Orwell takes advantage of language and words to criticize the effects a totalitarian Russian regime, while some of his characters in the novel use the power of language and words to control a farm that at first, was a great democracy. In Animal Farm, language was a control mechanism, used to encourage, fool, and manipulate.

Though language was mainly used for personal gain in this novel, Old Major used language for the opposite reason. He said things that were meant to encourage the rest of the animals on the farm, and they did. Before Old Major died he called a meeting to tell the animals that soon there would be a revolution and that someday the animals would run the farm. Old Major encouraged the other animals to create a revolt on the farm; he spoke against mankind saying, “Man serves the interests of no creature except himself. And among us animals let there be perfect unity, perfect comradeship in the struggle. All men are enemies. All animals are comrades” (21). Old Major’s words sounded promising and things went well for awhile, until some animals started taking advantage of the freedom.

As the novel progressed, language was beginning to be used for more negative reasons. The pigs began to take control in a very sly manner. They began to teach the little one’s how to read and work, at a very young age. Napoleon, on the other hand began taking a group of puppies aside as if he was also teaching them how to read, when in fact he was training them to be killers, they would later act as the law enforcement of the animal farm. This goes to show that the pigs began to fool the rest of the animals, and Napoleon was actually fooling everyone. Napoleon had fooled the animals by using Snowball as a scapegoat; he said to them, “Comrades, do you know who is responsible for this? Do you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill? SNOWBALL! Snowball has done this thing. Here and now I pronounce the death sentence upon Snowball” (72). Also, Napoleon always threatens of Jones’ return as a way of fooling the animals into working more. After fooling the animals for awhile, they decide to fool them in a way that will make them give something in return.