Monday, September 20, 2010
Allegorical use within animal farm
The first thing that I noticed when I went back and thought about the book was Orwell's use of allegories in the book. He uses them to denounce the piggish behaviors of the communists (in the book, they are indeed the pigs) and I also noticed another one. The sheep are the followers in the book, they do whatever the pigs tell them to and believe everything the pigs say without question. In today's world, if you were to call someone a sheep, you would be saying that they display similar qualities to the sheep in Animal Farm. With his allegorical use George Orwell is denouncing the actions of the communists and saying what he thinks of their philosophies and actions. With the sheep, he is saying that their general compliance and stupid acceptance allowed such a state to develop in Animal Farm. He is also saying that people who were similarly sheep like allowed the spread of communism in the 1950's and the rise of abusive totalitarian rulers during the same period in time.
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I agree in particular with your final sentence. Their "Four legs good, two legs bad" and later "Four legs good, two legs better" was able to, throughout the book, break up any sort of arguement by the farm animals. It was very convenient that whenever an animal was even the slightest bit rebellious (even if it just meant confusion and questioning), you could count on the sheep to drown out any conversation about the matter, until the animal in question forgot all about their issue.
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