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Animal Farm : All Power Corrupts

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Animal Farm: All Power Corrupts

“Choose a novel or short story or a work of non-fiction which explores a theme which you find interesting. By referring to appropriate techniques, show how the writer explores the theme.”

In the novel “Animal Farm”, author George Orwell explores a multitude of various themes. However, the underlying, ever-present, and arguably the most important theme in the book is power, and the corrupting effect it has on those who receive it. Orwell uses various language techniques throughout the novel to show the circumstances under which certain characters come to power on the farm, and their eventual exploitation of their authority. Through use of techniques such as allegory, theme and irony, the author establishes connections between his characters and real-life historical figures, showing the parallels between their stories and the eventual culmination of the events. George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is fundamentally an allegory, meaning it is a story which conceals its main meaning beneath the surface of another. Each main event in the ‘surface’ story, the farmyard fable, should have an equivalent in the hidden story, which is the Russian Revolution. For example, the expulsion of Snowball from the farm mirrors the expulsion of Trotsky from the Soviet Union in 1929. Just as power corrupted many of the animals on the farm, so did it corrupt their real-life equivalents. The book opens with a rousing speech from the boar Old

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