Examples Of Manipulation In Animal Farm By George Orwell

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Throughout George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, the pigs’ accumulation of power is possible when they broke the most important rule of the Seven Commandments – “All animals are equal.” The tyrannical ascent of the pigs’ power is the result of turning the prime weakness of the other animals into their advantage – intelligence. Due to the abundance of dumb and ignorant animals, all major decisions are made by the pigs. As the animals grow more and more dependant on them, the pigs use their vast susceptibility of manipulation through fear, elimination and language to gain and maintain power throughout the novel.
Fear is a very powerful emotion. Mr. Jones is the one running the farm in the beginning of the novel. Old Major is the one that miraculously …show more content…

Language can create a vision everyone wants to follow, such as the needs and desires, and summons many emotions. The illusion of integrity can be created by using powerful words. Squealer is known to be a very good speaker, so he is sent to justify anything the pigs did wrong. When the pigs were caught eating all the milk and apples, he explained that they “are [not doing] this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege. In fact, many of [them] actually dislike milk and apples […]” (35). Squealer insists that everyone benefits if the better food is given to the pigs, since they use their intellect to run the farm. Due to the abundance of dumb and ignorant animals that depend on them, they were immediately satisfied with his explanation. Slogans are used to mislead the least intelligent animals – the sheep. For them, the Seven Commandments are “reduced to a single maxim, namely: four legs good, two legs bad” (34). Since “it [is] noticed that [the sheep] [are] especially liable to break into ‘Four legs good, two legs bad’ at crucial moments […]” (48), the pigs use them to drown out any animals who protest their new rules, such as when they banned public meetings. Since most animals are illiterate, the pigs use that as an advantage by constantly changing the Seven Commandments for their own sake. For instance, when the pigs slaughtered the animals “which had been unknown [in Animal Farm] since the expulsion of Jones” (84), they had two words added to the sixth commandment: “No animal shall kill any other animal without cause” (91). The ultimate example of the pigs’ use of language manipulation is the final reduction of the Seven Commandments when they changed it to one rule: “ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS”. The illusion of fairness is achieved by implying that all animals are equal to one another, but it subtly

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