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Corruption In Animal Farm

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Corruption in Orwell’s Animal Farm and the Russian Revolution When a leader is chosen, he/she is expected to do what is right for his or her people. Unfortunately, many are greedy and once they are in power, they will do whatever it takes to maintain their power. This is known as corruption. One person who was extremely concerned about corruption was British author George Orwell. Socialism was the belief in social equality throughout the community in order to prevent corruption. Orwell traveled to Spain in 1936 to fight with the socialists in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell’s “experiences in Spain made him into a revolutionary socialist” (“Orwell, George” 254). With all of his experiences, along with his strong socialist beliefs, Orwell decided …show more content…

Lenin was a communist; he got this idea from Karl Marx. Marx was behind the idea of Marxism, which Lenin heard about and agreed with. He thought that socialism could be the solution to the major problems in the community at the time. Once he died, however, "Marx's ideas were changed and altered after his death to suit the needs of those subscribing to them, and were changed further to accommodate communism as practiced by Vladimir Lenin in the Soviet Union in the beginning of the twentieth century" (“Marxism”). The people in power of the Soviet Union at the time warped his ideas into something that would benefit them the most. The parallel to this in Animal Farm is shown through Old Major. He gave a speech to the animals in order to try and overthrow Mr. Jones, the owner of the farm. He makes the animals ponder how terrible their lives are under the oppression of Mr. Jones. “And even the miserable lives we lead are not allowed to reach their natural span … What then must we do? Why, work night and day, body and soul, for the overthrow of the human race! That is my message to you, comrades: Rebellion!” (Orwell 8-9). Shortly after this speech, Old Major dies. His words stuck with the animals. Both Marx/Lenin and Old Major have good intentions with their ideas, but once they die, their ideas get twisted into something that leads to a huge

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