Propaganda Assignment- Animal Farm. THEODORA MOUTINHO

 Propaganda Assignment

Animal Farm 

By: Theodora Moutinho

    

    Animal Farm is a book written by George Orwell in 1945. This book personifies animals and has hidden meanings behind each character meant to expose the dangers of the Russian Revolution.  For some background information on the characters, there was a farm with Old Major, a pig who represents Karl Marx and he was the leader of the animals. His sidekick pigs, Snowball and Napoleon were also communists. Squealer, who my paper will be focusing on, is a younger communist pig who represents the idea of Propaganda. Mr. Jones was the human man who owned the farm and he represents a corrupt, broken government. Boxer is a horse who represents the working class, uneducated, and believes in propaganda, a victim to communism. Finally, there are sheep who represent the naive masses.

    As for a short summary, Old Major calls a meeting with the animals on the farm informing them they must overthrow the humans, rebel, and take over the farm but he dies that same night. The remaining pigs take over the position as leaders and one night demand the animals to attack Mr. Jones for not feeding them on time, therefore running the humans off the farm and fully taking the lead role. After that, the pigs come up with commandments which they call "Animalism" and have strict rules such as the most important one: "Four legs good, two legs bad.", implying that animals are good and humans are bad. The rest of the animals follow through with every rule. They have successful harvests and every animal receives equal privileges until time goes on and the pigs start exerting their power by working less and gaining more while the sheep and the horses work harder. Napoleon steals puppies and trains them to be loyal to only him. He turns them into vicious, aggressive dogs that attack anyone who goes against his beliefs, representing how Communism works. After an argument with Snowball about the windmill, Napoleon orders the dogs to chase down Snowball and run him off the farm grounds. He takes credit for the windmill and alongside Squealer, promotes it was his idea all along. Propaganda is mostly seen around this part of the plot because Squealer convinces all the animals that Napoleon is a great, responsible leader when in reality he is just a lying pig. The farm begins running out of supplies but Squealer promotes that everything is okay and the harvest is going great, blindsiding the rest of the animals meanwhile the pigs are hoarding what little supplies the farm has left. Napoleon opens up trade with the human world and makes the animals feel unsafe. The pigs begin breaking their own laws of Animalism such as "no animal should sleep in a bed." or "No animal shall drink alcohol." Squealer keeps promoting the idea that Napoleon is becoming a great leader although conditions start falling for the animals at the farm. Napoleon also lies to the human world that the farm is thriving so that their trades can be better, this leads to overworked chickens and sheep. Harvest is still not going well so Napoleon decides to hold an event where the animals confess their sins and every rule of "Animalism" that they have broken and sentence them to death through his trained dogs. With over half of the animal population gone, the harvests go up and Squealer is responsible for promoting the idea that the progress occurring was because of Napoleon. Squealer uses propaganda to paint positive posters of Napoleon throughout the barns. He also uses propaganda to spread the word that any tragedy the farm had was due to the now dead, Snowball. The animals celebrate their victories and Napoleon declares the farm a republic, making himself president.  The animals continue to work as slaves and Boxer suddenly collapses. Napoleon sends him to the slaughterhouse but Squealer uses propaganda to pretend he died at the veterinarian. Both pigs make a promise to the animals that they will honor Boxer's death but instead buy themselves alcohol to get drunk. Years go by and the farm still has harsh conditions, the animals are even more overworked and Squealer teaches the sheep to chant "Four legs good, two legs better." and the pigs learn to walk on their hind legs. The rest of the animal population is scared and the initial commandments of "Animalism" are erased to become one singular maxim: "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." Napoleon then holds a banquet for farmers and pigs to make amends and stop rebelling against humans. The book ends with the rest of the farm animals peeping through the windows watching the pigs and humans playing poker, wearing clothes, drinking alcohol, standing on two legs, and breaking every rule in the initial "Animalism". They can't tell apart which ones are pigs and which ones are humans anymore.

    Evil groups of people will continue to use propaganda to instill misleading ideas, control the masses and gain more power. This is what propaganda is all about and it's exactly what Orwell wanted to portray. Squealer, the youngest of all pigs represents the idea of propaganda, he promoted ideas throughout the whole book which were in favor of the villain of the story, Napoleon. Squealer tricked the animals with his posters and speeches which were a direct example of propaganda. 

    The first time the readers see a case of propaganda is during the original commandments. "Four legs good, two legs bad." This statement was created by Snowball and Napoleon made to ignite a fire for the rest of the animals. It was meant to promote the idea that humans were bad which is propaganda at it's finest. This brainwashed the animals into thinking anything that walks on two legs is bad which further confused them when pigs began walking on two legs. It also made them subconsciously realize that they were being exploited in the end since they were trained to see two legs as a sign of evil. Squealer continues to use propaganda towards the end when he teaches the sheep to chant "Four legs good, two legs better." At this point, the naive masses are so used to the pigs "being right" that they went along with it again. They only started to notice there was something suspicious when they couldn't differentiate pigs from humans and that was already too late, they were powerless. Similarly to real life when the elite control the masses until the majority of society is too weak to fight back for their rights.

 

       The propaganda is less subtle when Squealer spreads the news that harvest is good, Napoleon is a great, responsible leader and Snowball is the pig who made everything go bad when in reality, they're low on supplies, Napoleon stole Snowballs ideas and living conditions are terrible for the masses. This was supposed to mock and expose the communist propaganda posters the soviet government would promote while their society was falling. The pigs did the same, they tricked their own people into believing harmful lies.

    The propaganda is still strong at the end of the book thanks to Squealer as the pigs change the 7 commandments into one singular maxim "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." This is a contradictory statement which in reality means all animals are not equal. Clearly, in the case of Animal Farm, the pigs were superior because they faked their way to the top. Napoleon and Squealer were mass manipulators and were able to keep the rest of the animals on a leash while they gained the trust of the humans to fully help them be above everyone else. The propaganda in this final example is that by betraying their trust, they were able to control them further. They blatantly exposed themselves saying not all animals were equal but phrased it in a way that was tricky to understand. The hypocrisy gave this book an extremely sad ending but with an important message from Orwell; stay cautious with powerful figures who may seem like heroes but in reality are undercover villains. Evil may seem like they're on your side with your best interest in mind but people are selfish.