Animal farm theme of power: leadership and corruption

Animal Farm Theme of Power: Leadership and Corruption That power corrupts is an inevitable conclusion of Animal Farm. When the pigs take over they claim that their goal is to preside over a farm of equal animals, all working together to support one another. Yet power quickly proves to be too much for a pig. Small privileges quickly bloom into full-scale corruption, and the pigs begin more and more to resemble those whom they claim to replace. major conflict · There are a number of conflicts in Animal Farm–the animals versus Mr. Jones, Snowball versus Napoleon, the common animals versus the pigs, Animal Farm versus the neighboring humans–but all of them are expressions of the underlying tension between the exploited and exploiting classes and between the lofty ideals and harsh realities of socialism Conflicts As the book is quite plainly written it is easy to spot the conflicts. One obvious external conflict is between the humans and the animals on the farm. They are both between Mr. Jones who initially owned the farm as well as Mr. Frederik who later attacks the farm and the other farm owners who opposed the farm and its new reign.  There are also outspoken conflicts inside the farm, the major one being between the pigs Snowball and Napoleon that can be seen in the first quote. This which then resulted in Napoleon raising ferocious dogs to run Snowball of the property of animal farm and blame all future malfunctions on Snowball. “ This arrangement would have worked well enough if it had not been for the disputes between Snowball and Napoleon. These two disagreed at every point where disagreement was possible. ” — Animal Farm, G. Orwell p. 31 On the farm there is an overall internal conflict going on. This about where the animals reason whether or not to believe in the raven Moses and his story of the paradise known as “ Sugarcandy Mountain”. Initially the animals despised him and his stories and only a few believed in them but as the living conditions on the farm decreased more and more animals started believing in his stories. “ The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work, but a few of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, ” — G. Orwell p. 11 “ Many of the animals believed him. Their lives now, they reasoned were hungry and laborious; was it not right and just that a better world should exist somewhere else? ” — G. Orwell p. 78 Another, more specific internal conflict is Boxer’s guilt after the “ Battle for the Cowshed” where he accidentally kills a man in the attack and afterwards regrets this deeply. On one side is the fact that the humans were attacking Animal Farm and they needed to defend themselves but the guilt of killing a living being weighs heavily on him. “’He is dead,’ said Boxer sorrowfully. ‘ I had no intention of doing that. I forgot that I was wearing iron Shoes. Who will believe that I did not do this on purpose?’… ‘ I have no wish to take life, not even human life,’ repeated Boxer, and his eyes were full of tears. ” —G. Orwell p. 28 Furthermore Mollie have a problem with the conflict as she had grown used to the comfort that she had had during the rule of the humans and was reluctant to the idea of the revolution in the first place. And was torn in conflict between the injustice she saw being done to her comrades and her past. “ The stupidest questions of all were asked by Mollie, the white mare. The very first question she asked snowball was: ‘ Will there still be sugar after the Rebellion’