Food for Animal Farm: A Carrot on a Stick that Changed Fate
By Robert Ezra Stern
Vladimir Lenin, a communist leader, once said, “One man with a gun can control 100 without one.” By this phrase, he meant that if someone in a position of power – any position of power, be it the President of the United States, or the guy who is threatening to kill your wife- can control you in many ways. His quote also gives us a great window into how the pigs behave in the 1945 book Animal Farm, written by George Orwell. In the book, the pigs can control the actions of the other animals on the farm by controlling a certain part of their daily life. In this essay, I will discuss many ways the pigs’ (specifically Napoleon) ability to control other animal’s ration sizes give them the power necessary to take over, and eventually run the Animal Farm.
During the start of the Rebellion, Napoleon used food as a way to encourage the animals that the better times were coming, and that they should be confident in Animalism. The latter was very important to Napoleon and the pigs. They then used that confidence in Animalism as a way to help bend the goings-on on the farm to their will. Their first act as leaders of Animal Farm was to raise morale, and they used food to do it. At the start of the book, the animals on the farm just had rebelled against Mr. Jones, and soon after, had destroyed all evidence of humans. “In a very little while the animals had destroyed everything that reminded them of Mr. Jones. Napoleon then led them back to the store-shed and served out a double ration of corn to everybody, with two biscuits for each dog.” (pg. 21) Napoleon knew that the animals on the farm might be a little skeptical about running the farm on their own, so he br...
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...ating it as an enemy, just like a human. Nobody wanted to be an enemy, or a human. However, the pigs were great at getting animals to believe what they wanted them to believe, in this case, that they are not the enemy of Animalism. “[Squealer] was a brilliant talker…. he could turn black into white.” (pg.16) Imagine what could have happened if Squealer were not fed.
Food for Animal Farm was the “carrot on a stick” that kept the farm going, and eventually, led the farm to corruption. Food was the first thing that separated the pigs from the rest of the pack. It put the power in their hands. They used food as a tool to boost confidence and make animals enthusiastic. Food was used as a way to manipulate the animals into working. Finally, food was used and abused by the pigs as a tool for punishment. In the words of Lenin, food is the “gun” that can control 100 people