Manipulation In Animal Farm

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As a citizen, it is one’s duty to make sure their government is governing with their best interests in mind, and to be certain that is ruling for the good of society and fairly. Therefore, it is also a citizen’s duty to listen to their leaders and know when they are being manipulated. Animal Farm, by George Orwell, is a good example of how easily an uneducated and naïve audience can be persuaded to believe something and manipulated into thinking something is correct or morally right. The language, both written and spoken, in Animal Farm is the means by which the pigs rewrite history, persuade the animals that their ideals and plans are good, and that they are not tyrants, but in fact working for the good of the people. This is precisely
At the beginning of the novel, the animals were underfed, but as the story progressed, it quickly became evident that they were receiving less food as time went on, until they were getting less food than in Jones’ day and working longer hours. The only thing that kept them from seriously questioning this was their pride of being able to run the farm without humans. However, the pigs had become so much like humans, that even that pride was grounded on a false statement. They were, effectively, running the farm as slaves as they had before. A citizen has a duty to speak up and bring about change when there is corruption and injustice in their government, but as this novel plainly points out, this also requires the ability to see the corruption and injustice. This requires education, which few if not all of the animals (aside from the pigs) had. Knowledge is a gateway to power, and if all of the power is in the government, the citizens have become slaves, following the government through blind faith. A modern citizen should understand the different kinds of propaganda and means of persuasion and manipulation, but not necessarily always suspect the government of corruption. If there is uneasiness about something in a government, a citizen should try to figure out why. This is something that occurred many times in the novel, but the animals did not question anything (or couldn’t) and once they had been reassured by Squealer, were

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