There Is No Power without Hypocrisy

In the second season of House of Cards the main character Frank Underwood makes and excellent comment on hypocrisy; “The road to power is paved with hypocrisy… and casualties”. In this quotation Frank Underwood states that in order for him to gain power he must have, at some point, been hypocritical; in his eyes there could be no other way for him to have become Vice President of the United States without being hypocritical once. Much like Frank Underwood, the pigs of Animal Farm have been hypocritical. Snowball, Squealer, and Napoleon are perfect examples of how hypocrisy is critical when wanting to gain power.

Going on the theory that to become powerful you must be hypocritical, Snowball, having power over all animals, must be hypocritical. Snowball can be portrayed as a hypocrite in that he reads human books; there is evidence of this all throughout the book: “The pigs now revealed that during the past three months they had taught themselves how to read and write from an old spelling book which had belonged to Jones’s children and which had been thrown on the rubbish heap” (15) and “Snowball, who had studied an old book of Julius Caesar’s campaigns which he had found in the farm house” (26). These show that for months after the rebellion the pigs and Snowball especially use human resources to advance their own knowledge. Even though humans are seen as evil beings that tyrannize their own kind he still uses the knowledge to gain more power by getting rid of the humans completely so they cannot influence the animals anymore. Another way Snowball can be considered a hypocrite is that he writes and designs using human knowledge. You can see this in the lines: “Then Snowball (for it was Snowball who was best at writing) took a brus...

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... is extremely hypocritical in that he himself is not there arguing his side, which shows that he cannot even be bothered to do that, let alone do actual work. Finally he breaks the unspoken rule of not harming any fellow animals, this he does multiple times; on page 56 Napoleon orders the execution of any animal that confesses of treason and on page 89 when the pigs are walking on their hind legs Napoleon comes out last with a whip in his hands and with the intension of using it. In these scenes Napoleon finally has made himself indistinguishable from a human and has begun to tyrannize his own kind which is exactly what Old Major warned them of in his speech: “And remember also that in fighting Man, we must not come to resemble him” (6).

Works Cited

Orwell, George. Animal Farm. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954. Print.

"Chapter 22." House of Cards. N.d. Television.