Animal Farm: Corruption Essay

In the book, Animal Farm written by George Orwell, the animals raise up in rebellion against their human masters in hope for a better life. However, the quote by Lord Acton, a British historian, describes it best: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." This is basically what happens. The pigs realize their intellectual superiority, and use it to their advantage. When this happens, they began to take advantage of the entire society of animals. The pigs of the story sacrifice the good of the whole just for the benefit and pleasure of their selves. To begin with, the story starts when the animals in Manor Farm stage a rebellion against the humans after a rousing speech from Major, a very respected boar in the farm. They chase their human master, Mr. Jones, away and begin to run the farm themselves. At first, all goes well. With Mr. Jones gone, the animals believe they now own the farm collectively, and that they are all equal. The Seven Commandments are soon set up to act as the governing laws for the animals. Among the commandments are "no animal shall kill another animal", "all animals are equal" and "whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy". It is soon decided that the pigs are the most intelligent, and shall be the "brainworkers". Among the pigs, two leaders emerge - Snowball and Napoleon. Problems arise when Snowball and Napoleon disagree on the plan to build a windmill on the farm. Snowball, a talented speaker, easily gains the support of most of the animals. But, unfortunately for him, Napoleon plays dirty and Snowball is chased away from the farm. From here, everything in the farm starts to change. Public debates are abolished and the animals have to take orders from Napoleon. All the animals, except the pigs and dogs, are made to extremely strenuous labor. Their food ration decreases while the pigs grow fatter. Despite this, they are still convinced that life is much better than before when in fact the living condition that they were suffering now were worse than when Mr. Jones had been running the farm. Everything that goes wrong in the farm is blamed on Snowball. He becomes the invisible enemy whose threat is constantly present. For example, when the windmill falls down for the first time, Napoleon, using his cunning, blames it out Snowball, making the animals hate him all the worse. Napoleon is admired and praised. But soon, the pigs break the commandments. But Napoleon is clever enough to change the commandments so that the animals, who are generally stupid, never realizes when the commandments are broken. One example of this was when the Commandment "No animal shall kill another animal" became "no animal shall kill another animal without reason". The animals kept silent when the smallest liberties were taken away from them, and soon, they find that nothing they said mattered anymore. They were no longer equals - the pigs had become the masters.

With the plot of the story in the clear, we can see that Napoleon and the pigs take advantage of the other animals of the society in major ways. Every thing that has been done has been to the benefit of Napoleon and his pigs. After the Napoleon killed many animals for treason, he realized he has broken one of his own commandments so he changes the Commandment to end with "without reason." Napoleon did not care if it would benefit the society and how it ran. He just wanted to make sure that he could not be hurt by his own people. Another example of how Napoleon used the stupidity of the other animals to his advantage is the fact that one of the first Commandments was that "no animal shall sleep in a bed." Napoleon, upon finding out how comfortable the beds were, changed his commandment. The words "with sheets" were added to the end so that Napoleon and the pigs could live out their lives in pleasure in the farmhouse. Napoleon also killed these animals if they had anything thought other than that Napoleon was always right. Boxer, the hardest working animal on the farm, always believed that Napoleon was right because he had such extremely blind-faith in his leaders. Finally, towards the end of the book, Boxer starts to question Napoleon. Napoleon immediately takes action and sells Boxer to the glue factory. The money that Napoleon makes from selling the workhorse, he buys a case of whiskey. So the in Napoleon's eyes, the hardest working animal on the farm ended up to be worth a case of whiskey. Which also brings up that point that once Napoleon began to find out the tastes of liquor, he changed another commandment. The commandment "no animal shall drink" was changed to say "no animal shall drink to excess." One other rule he changed was when the pigs started to walk on two legs, they changed the rule from "Four legs good, two legs bad" to "Four legs good, two legs better." All so that Napoleon and his pigs can walk on two legs. Finally, Napoleon must have gotten sick of changing the laws of the farm so he threw out the laws and made one new rule. "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." This law makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Napoleon's arrogance and power have taken over to the point where he is basically trying to say that the pigs are the better animals.

In conclusion, Napoleon after taking over Animal Farm from Snowball and Mr. Jones, does everything and anything possible that favors him and or the pigs. The power that he has over the animals of animal farm is quite amazing. Most follow him blindly, but however if they do not, they are killed. Napoleon lowered the food rations of the other animals so he could gorge every night. He changed commandments so that he could not be found guilty by these laws. He basically destroyed the farm and any chance that it had to survive on its own.