Chapter 3 Of George Orwell's Animal Farm

George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a blatant satire of the Soviet Union and Stalin’s regime. Orwell specifically focuses on themes of greed, power, and corruption to convey the atrocities which he directly implements into his story. One of the more striking passages from the end of chapter 3 explores this theme through the literacy ability of the animals. As was previously discussed in the book, human qualities, according to the ideologies outlined in “animalism”, are inherently evil and should not be viewed in a positive manner, yet this passage directly contrasts the rule. Language, being an inherently human characteristic, has turned into a measure of intelligence for the various animals as evidenced by the line, “As for the pigs, they could already read and write perfectly,” (this being significant as the pigs are the de facto leaders of the

Not only is the simple nature subject to manipulation, as seen by the line “The birds at first objected, since it seemed to them that they also had two legs, but Snowball proved to them that this was not so…” but is also the basis to the propaganda spreading through the farm, which is seen at the end of the passage-“…the sheep developed a great liking for this maxim, and often as they lay in the field they would all start bleating `Four legs good, two legs bad!…and keep it up for hours on end, never growing tired of it.” The manipulation of the line is also seen once again towards the end of the book, being changed to “Four legs good, two legs better,” to perpetuate the propaganda set up by the pigs. The importance of language is a common theme throughout all of Orwells