Free Essays - Animal Farm :: Animal Farm

Having so much power is not always a good thing. In George Orwell’s classic novel Animal Farm, this is proved to an almost scary extent where the characters are mainly animals, not people. In this novel, the animals speak to each other as humans would talk to other humans, making the novel very interesting to read. The point I am trying to make here as it is proven time and time again in history, as well as in this book, is that absolute power corrupts; and it corrupts absolutely. It all starts on The Manor Farm, where Old Major (the elder pig), makes an announcement. He includes in his speech that one day the animals will revolt against the humans taking charge of them, and treating them unjustly. He ends his speech with a song, called the Beasts of England that he taught the animals from his childhood. On the farm were two pigs who Mr. Jones (the owner of Manor Farm) was breeding up for sale. One was Snowball, the other, Napoleon. Snowball was more of a talker and Napoleon more likely to take action. The rest of the pigs were porkers and there was a little fat one that was well known to most of the animals on the farm and was very persuasive, he was called Squealer. There were also sheep, chickens, and horses, the only one worth mentioning is Boxer out of the lot. Boxer was the strongest animal and the hardest worker on the farm, and so, as you could imagine, was a great help to it. As time passed, so did Old Major, and Mr. Jones was treating the animals unfairly. One night, he got drunk and didn’t come back for a whole day and even when he did, the animals were not fed. As a result the animals had enough and took a stand, they chased Mr. Jones and his men off the farm as they called it their own. Celebrations followed and life was good for the animals, they even changed the name of the farm, and got rid of anything that reminded them of humans or Mr. Jones. A few months passed and the pigs revealed that they could now read and write. As a result of this, Snowball set up the "Seven Commandments" that every animal must follow with no exceptions, but the main idea was that all animals are equal.