Deception In Slawomir Mrozek's Story 'The Elephant'

Animals by Simon Rich is an outstanding short story which takes a unique perspective on the everyday life in a classroom. The story is written from the point of view of a hamster who spends his tortured life entrapped in a cage. From the first point in this story it is clear that the purpose of the writing is not to understand the hamster, but rather to analyse the different actions of the people, and to discover that how they act towards the hamsters reflects on their character. It is curious to view the everyday interactions of people through a different set of eyes, that is done by humanizing the narrator’s perspective. Based on the actions of the many people and the treatment of the class pet, the author suggests that human nature is very much a product of the financial circumstances a person is subjected to.

The animals go from a society in which they believe to be unacceptable to a life which becomes even worse than it began. The worst part, however, is that the oppression stems from an animal himself. Napoleon, the totalitarian leader, changes the founding ideas in which their ideal society was formed in order to increase his control, but continuously tells the animals that things are significantly better than before. Eventually, “the lower animals on Animal Farm did more work and received less food than any animals in the country.” The animals allow this to happen because they placed their trust in leadership and were wrongly educated on the circumstances. They are fed lies until they no longer remember their history, which allows the oppression to come full circle.

Human beings have full control over their identities after they have received knowledge and have become shaped from external stimuli. These stimuli include the teaching process of humans which comes through tradition, schooling, and the actions of other humans and the influence of the organisms around them. Andrew Solomon, through “Son,” was able to use his experience of growing up and labeling himself as a gay dyslexic to show how his environment and knowledge had shaped his identity and how it was viewed by others with different identities. In “An Elephant Crackup,” Charles Siebert was able to explain how the other organisms or humans are able to form new identities for elephants over time by shaping them a new environment and having the elephants process it. In “Mind’s Eye,” Oliver Sacks had different case studies of blindness from different people and was able to show how each one experienced their blindness help shape and express their individual identities. The stimuli that becomes processed by a person in the situations, accounts, and studies of these works assist in the role of explaining the formulation of an identity.

A key character who explores the themes of rhetoric and social control, is the pig Squealer, the animals are easily tricked particularly by Squealer who has an understanding of rhetoric and is able to control other animals by abusing language and radicalising simple mantras bleated by sheep, “Four legs good, two legs bad”. This causes Animals with opposing views to be silenced out and the mass of uneducated animals follow along as big words are complicated to understand but small words and simplistic slogans are easy to follow regardless of their logic. “Frightened though they were, some of the animals might possibly have protested, but at this moment the sheep set up their usual bleating of "Four legs good, two legs bad," which went on for several minutes and put an end to the discussion.” (7.36)

During post-Soviet Czechoslovakia, people strove for control over their lives but rarely achieved it. In The Guinea Pigs by Ludvik Vaculik, Vasek Sr. tries to make a life for himself and his family. He has high hopes for them, and he thinks that they have a happy and prosperous life. However, a combination of circumstance and insufficient pay prevent him from doing things that he wants. As the novel progresses, the narrator feels like he has less and less control over his life until he tries to seize back control and ultimately fails. Vasek has so little control over his job at the bank that he buys guinea pigs in order to have something he can control. Despite the fact that he loves his family, Vasek’s lack of control in his job, leads to suffering for his family and his ultimate death.

Another example of this is when the narrator says, "They had nothing to go on except Squealer's lists and figures." by manipulating the numbers, the pigs are able to convince the animals that their lives are better with Napoleon as their leader. Because of their ignorance, the animals do not realize their lives are indeed worse. Furthermore, the lists and figures are appealing to the society since they reflect what the animals want. This will prevent the animals from rebelling. In conclusion, the animals will not be able to realize the pigs are corrupted due to their lack of education. Second, the pigs are constantly portrayed as heroes due to them telling lies. One example is when Boxer gets sick, and the narrator says, "Benjamin pushed her [Muriel} aside... he read Alfred Simmons, horse slaughterer." The animals are not able to tell that Boxer is going to the slaughterhouse, due to their inability to read. Furthermore, by telling the animals that Boxer is going to the doctor to get better, the pigs are becoming more powerful and credible. This will allow them to take control of the society, create a dictatorship, and tell more lies in the

George Orwell, in Animal Farm, addresses blind conformity and misuse of power. There are many comparisons between Animal Farm and Germany under Hitler’s tyranny concerning these two themes. Napoleon and Hitler both used propaganda to ensure there was blind conformity amongst the common people/animals and they both misused their power. The two themes of blind conformity and misuse of power are constantly repeated throughout the novel and will be studied throughout this essay.

Animal Farm by George Orwell is a satire that exposes and criticizes the corruption of the Russian Revolution by using animals to represent political figures. The novel symbolizes a time of darkness in Russia as one that resulted in a government more controlling, totalitarian, and deadly than the one it overthrew. The short story “Harrison Bergeron” is set in the year 2081 where thanks to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments, everyone is equal to each other. Although the two works of literature may sound to be very distinct from one another, they both are full of social commentary.

The barn at Animal Farm, on whose outside walls the pigs paint the Seven Commandments and, later, their revisions, represents the collective memory of a modern nation. The many scenes in which the ruling-class pigs alter the principles of Animalism and in which the working-class animals puzzle over but accept these changes represent the way an institution in power can revise a community’s concept of history to bolster its control. If the working class believes history to lie on the side of their oppressors, they are less likely to question oppressive practices. Moreover, the oppressors, by revising their nation’s conception of its origins and development, gain control of the nation’s very identity, and the oppressed soon come to depend upon the authorities for their communal sense of self.

George Orwell’s 1930 short story “Shooting an Elephant,” demonstrates the total dangers of the unlimited authority a state has and the astounding presentment of “future dystopia”. In the story, Orwell finds himself to be in an intricate situation that involves an elephant. Not only does the fate of the elephant’s life lie in Orwell’s hands, he has an audience of people behind him cheering him on, making his decision much more difficult to make. Due to the vast crowd surrounding his thoughts, Orwell kills the elephant in the end, not wanting to disappoint the people of Burma. Orwell captures the hearts of readers by revealing the struggles he has while dealing with the burden of his own beliefs and morals.

The leaders and their use of deceiving contributes to the loss of freedom on Animal Farm. The leaders on the farm can have animals follow or work for him

Animal Farm, a fiction novella by George Orwell, displays a political satire reflecting the problems and ironies in the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union. Animal Farm follows the animals of Manor Farm, who revolt and take over the farm from their cruel owner. Eventually, the pigs (particularly Napoleon) become the leaders of the farm plummeting the originally republic rulership into a dictatorship. The corruption of power between the pigs leads to the ultimate suffering of the rest of the farm animals. At the end of the book, the farm animals are looking into a window where the pigs and humans are having a meeting and realize, “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” (Orwell 141). This scene conveys to the readers that not only have the pigs abused their power, but the animals only realized once it was too late. The pigs exploit the animals several times throughout the story, most apparently through the alterations of the original rules set in place by the pigs themselves. The repetition of lying to the remaining animals shows the pigs’ fraudulence in their

For every activity one does, time is very important for the activity. In stories, chronology is especially important for it helps the reader understand what is happening but also gains a message from it. Chronological order is part of the plot diagram in any story where the story begins which takes the reader to rising action. The author of Elephant, Slawomir Mrozek and the author of The Secret Lost in the Water, Roch Carrier showed how chronology is very important to the story. These authors used different themes to portray chronology. This can be demonstrated through the loss of faith, psychology of believing and through appearance vs reality. Therefore, variations of chronology have been shown.

“History consists of a series of swindles, in which he masses are first lured into revolt by the promise of utopia, and then, when they have done their job, enslaved over again by new masters” (Brander). Animal Farm, a farm with animals that are treated cruelly and dream for a better life in which animals are all equal and independent of depraved humans, is an allegory of the development of communism, even totalitarianism. After successfully driving away Mr. Jones, the cruel, tyrannous, drunken owner of the farm, the animals, with the pigs acting as leaders for their superior intelligence, believe they are going to be rewarded with the certainty of living in an

Animal Farm is a novel by George Orwell. It is an allegory in which animals play the roles of Russian revolutionists, and overthrow the human owners of the farm. Once the farm has been taken over by the animals, they are all equal at first, but class and status soon separates the different animal species. This story describes how a society’s ideologies can be manipulated by those in political power, to cause corruption by those in leadership.