Animal Farm Essay
The
animals are differentiated not only according to gender but also by intelligence, the pigs being described as both intelligent
and piggish even at
an early stage in the revolution, when they appropriate the cows' milk for their own use. The other
animals, with only a few exceptions, are generous, hardworking,
and stupid by contrast. It is not power that corrupts the pigs; power simply provides them with the me
ans to realize their "nature." The betrayal
of the revolution in
Animal Farm, though it occurs over a period
of time, is not, in f
act, described as a process. This is why
Animal Farm, beyond what it has to say concerning Stalin
and the Soviet Union, has a pr
ofoundly dispiriting message. Orwell presents a static picture
of a static universe in which the notion
of the pigs'
animal nature explains what happens. The final tableau, with the pigs
and the men indistinguishable, is the
actualization
of the potential inherent in the pigs from the beginning. Unlike what he does in Nineteen Eighty-Four, however, Orwell gives the pigs specific material motives for the exploitation
of the other
animals: better food, more leisure,
and a privileged life, all acquired partly by terrorizing
and partly by gulling the others into thinking that because the pigs are more intelligent they alone c
an m
anage the farm.