Stereotypes In George Orwell's Animal Farm

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Recommended: Role of satire essays

Husnea Neloy
October 13, 2015
ENG 1 Honors
Sixth Period George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm, based the animals in the book off of stereotypes. When composing such a satirical and allegorical story, not only is it common to use stereotypes but useful as well. To a certain degree the author must employ stereotypes to make the characters fit into a symbolic molds. Stereotypes are universal. Meaning, they exist in every community, society, and culture. This means that they are socially significant and reflect something about human traits and character. Stereotypes are often seen as a negative, but author George Orwell took advantage of stereotypes and with them he created the satirical book Animal Farm; the characters in his book …show more content…

It is a testament to Orwell’s acute political intelligence and to the universality of his fable that Napoleon can easily stand for any great dictators and political schemers in world history, even those who arose after Animal Farm was written. Another example would be, these following stereotypes.
Pigs - Represents selfishness and gluttony. Can’t tell humans and pigs apart.
Horses - Slow-witted, strong, and loyal.
Sheep - Brainless and behaves as a flock, without individual initiative.
In the book these stereotypes are frequently conveyed in through book, especially in chapter 10. To finally conclude this essay, I’ll go over my opinion once again. I think that employing stereotypes is indeed useful in this book. Using stereotypes is common and useful, and to a certain degree stereotypes are employed to many stories similar too Animal Farm. Using stereotypes in stories like these makes reading a little more interesting and not boring. And it also very rare to see satire without some type of stereotype

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