Inevitable Corruption

A response to Animal Farm by George Orwell.

The king surveyed his kingdom from his window. The window was large, expensively constructed, and had a beautiful stained glass pattern that reflected the light in millions of hues. In fact, the entire castle and courtyard was simply breathtaking, from the expertly designed interior and the pricey furniture to the beautiful garden and the cleanly cut landscapes. However, as the king looked out past this magnificent realm, he noticed with great sadness how the rest of the region appeared: dirty, poor, and poverty-stricken. “Such a pity,” the king said to himself. “It’s just too bad, however. I am the king, and my needs come first.” Just like the king, the pigs in the satire Animal Farm by George Orwell were standing by while their loyal followers, the other animals, perished. So much control can never be a good thing, and as they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

At the beginning of the novel, all of the animals residing at Manor Farm are eager to begin a revolution against mankind and anything resembling it. After taking over the land for themselves, the new leaders, the pigs called Squealer, Snowball, and Napoleon, design commandments that the other animals agree to follow. Ultimately, they can be combined into one simple statement: “four legs good, two legs bad”. However, as time goes on, the rules slowly are altered and eventually get diminished altogether. In the end, the animals had become what they had sworn they would never be. They ended up acting exactly like the men they had rejected initially. This is what happens when so much pressure is put on someone to be ‘as good as the ones that came before them’, which was the case when Napoleon tried to create a better farm than the old owner, Mr. Jones did. Napoleon, as well as Squealer and Snowball, gained too much power too quickly and ended up nearly destroying the farm with their ambitious plans to upstage humanity.

Just as the characters in the novel faltered in their plans, the people involved in the Russian Revolution that occurred around 1917 failed to achieve their goal of a communist world. Since the novel is a satire, each of the characters and animals represents a person or a group of people from the actual Revolution. Throughout the novel, the author George Orwell is trying to tell the readers about the flaws of the Russians. He is saying that although their original intentions of creating a better country with communism were good, Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky, represented by Squealer, Napoleon, and Snowball in the novel, could not manage the power they were given and ended up creating a world of fear and inequality. Humanity is simply not fit to handle great power and control, no matter how good-hearted of a person is entrusted with the honor.

Leadership is a difficult role to take on, and will corrupt if the leader has complete control. If the animals in the farm had stuck to their principles of ‘Animalism’ and made sure all animals were treated equally with no ultimate ruler, they might have had a better life. The same goes for humanity. If people keep their lives under control and don’t get too caught up in their greed and selfishness, they will succeed. After all, having control over everything will always end in disaster.