Animal farm - knowledge is power

George Orwell’s novel ‘ Animal Farm’ is an allegorical fable of the Russian Revolution. It depicts the Revolution in a way that is inoffensive to people and also very easy to understand. This controversial novel also teaches many valuable lessons, all very true in man’s past and also in the present. In all of man’s histories, there are legends of tyrannical kings and merciless emperors, corrupted with the thirst for ultimate power. Education also played an important role in the subjugation of mankind; the intelligent and educated use their knowledge to undermine and control the naïve uneducated proletariats. The naïveté of an ignorant working class is detrimental to any society; neither communist nor democratic societies are unaffected. Power is a blessing and also a curse, cast upon man and affecting us all, nevertheless, it affects those without power, as well as those with power. All great leaders had and have great power. Power is not biased, it does not make a good leader a good person, but it can make a good person a tyrannical and merciless leader. For example, Adolf Hitler was a great leader, but he was a very bad man. Due to the knowledge, cunning and coaxing of education, leaders can become corrupted and tainted, tainted with the poison of corruption laced in their meal of power and control. Such was what occurred in ‘ Animal Farm’; the pigs who were educated gained power and control over Manor Farm, which under the concept of Animalism, they called Animal Farm. From a communist society, the Revolution resulted in a dictatorship being set up. In essence, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and no one is safe from themselves, no one is safe from the flaws of human nature. In today’s society, influences from the western world depict education as a prerequisite for adulthood, required to be undertaken as a child. We as students in a western world must learn the ways of the western world and how we can alter and instil it into the societies of the honourable eastern world. In ‘ Animal Farm’, the pigs first tried to teach the other animals to read; some animals learnt the alphabet, but most did not. Seeing this, the pigs realized that they could tell the animals anything and they would have to be believed. Gradually, the pigs began to control education and began to indoctrinate the animals. For example, the sheep were taught to say ‘ Four legs good, two legs bad’ at certain times so that the animals had to listen to the pigs’ propaganda, which was accepted and remained unquestioned. So it was in the Russian Revolution; Stalin controlled the level of education provided to the proletariats and therefore gained power over them. Through this lack of education, the Russian peasants were unable to detect the gradual power Stalin was establishing over them. This is too true in reality – some people are so naïve that they will believe in what they are told, regardless of what events occur, for they are unable to think for themselves, they are unable to know anything else. This is largely the job of the American media: they just allow the world [media] to know what America wants them to know. Squealer’s job is exactly this: he gives the animals false figures and calculations that exist only to keep the rest of the farm in check and under the pigs control – this is the highly effective result of propaganda. A good example of educated people controlling uneducated people are immigrants entering a country where they do not [fully] know the language. Thus they are very vulnerable and do what they are told as they have not learnt otherwise. In the novel, Boxer represents the naïve and uneducated proletariats and the pigs are the intelligentsia of Soviet Russia. Due the naïveté of the working class, they are a danger to themselves, as since they cannot think for themselves, they will blindly obey the higher classes and possibly work themselves to death. This is what happened to Boxer in the novel, (whose maxims were ‘ I will work harder’ and ‘ Comrade Napoleon is always right’). He was key in building the windmill and constantly pushed his limits because he believed that the farm was in better times, since Jones had been overthrown. In the end his lungs collapsed and became no longer useful; the pigs betrayed him and sent him off to the knackers to be made into glue. Only the pigs benefited as they received money with which they bought more luxuries (namely whisky) for themselves. Thus are the naïve proletariats dangerous – they are the majority of and therefore important to society, as they are the workers, but when removed, society falls and nothing but destruction can move ahead.