Leadership In Animal Farm

Throughout history, the world has seen many forms of government and multiple types of leaders and their leadership styles. One of the styles that has had the biggest impact on the world has been tyranny. Examples of this are Hitler in Germany, and Stalin in Russia. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the animals that live on Manor Farm want their freedom, so they overthrow the tyrannical government headed by Mr. Jones, but the new Animal Farm was not a success due to its new leader, Napoleon. No matter who the leader was or what the leadership style was, Animal farm was always doomed to fail because of human nature, strength of mind, and a fear factor.

Animal Farm could not have succeeded due to human nature, or in this case, Animal Nature

The main reason that Animal Farm did not and can not succeed is because there is always a fear factor that will be put into play. Napoleon’s biggest weapon was his ability to inflict fear. ”Napoleon acted swiftly and ruthlessly. He ordered the hens’ rations to be stopped, and decreed that any animal giving so much as a grain of corn to a hen should be punished by death,”(76). When the hens’ refused Napoleon,everybody else was too afraid of Napoleon to stand up to him to help them.“Since Jones had left the farm, until today, no animal had killed another animal.”(85) Napoleon had begun slaughtering any animal that refused him, and any animal that confessed to having interaction with Snowball. He realized that some of the animals were beginning to question him and realize that he might have been the wrong choice for a leader. Napoleon needed to keep his power and influence so he used his trained dogs to kill all that refused him. “These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on the night when Old Major first stirred them to rebellion. If she herself had any picture of the future, it had been of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak.”(86) Clover finally realized how bad things around the farm had gotten, yet she said nothing because of her fear of Napoleon and his abilities to harm

They are also the reasons why it could not succeed under any other leadership. In Animal Farm, perspectives from multiple animals are shown. A new leader would have an impact on the farm but not a big enough impact to change the success of Animal Farm. Once human nature took over, the fear factor would present itself in the leader as a way of keeping absolute power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. History shows many examples of government power corrupting, no matter what the style is. Government corruption is inevitable just like the failure of Animal