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Is Animal Farm Better Than Jones's Time?

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Animal Farm by George Orwell can directly relate to George Santayana's quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This quote means we are prone to repeat ourselves if we cannot remember our mistakes from the past and learn from them; and by the time we notice a repetition in history, it is already too late. The animals in Animal Farm are not able to tell if their situation is better or worse than Jones's time because they cannot remember their life in the past. "There were times when it seemed to the animals that they worked longer hours and fed no better than they had done in Jones’s day. On Sunday mornings Squealer, holding down a long strip of paper with his trotter, would read out to them lists of figures proving …show more content…

The first time, it is knocked down on page --, "In the morning the animals came out of their stalls to find that the flagstaff had been blown down and an elm tree at the foot of the orchard had been plucked up like a radish. They had just noticed this when a cry of despair broke from every animal’s throat. A terrible sight had met their eyes. The windmill was in ruins." The next time they build the wall thicker, but it is knocked down again because Napoleon does not remember the last time the windmill fell. "They were going to knock the windmill down. ‘Impossible!’ cried Napoleon. ‘We have built the walls far too thick for that. They could not knock it down in a week. Courage, comrades'…When they got up again, a huge cloud of black smoke was hanging where the windmill had been. Slowly the breeze drifted it away. The windmill had ceased to exist!" George Orwell's Animal Farm proves George Santayana's quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” through the plot itself and the events within …show more content…

Hegel once said “What experience and history teach is this—that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.” Somewhat alike to Santayana's quote, this quote means that we do not learn from our mistakes from the past and repeat what has happened before. This is similar to many actions of the characters in Animal Farm. The Rebellion starts because they want to be free from the cruelty of their ‘masters.’ Old major states on page --, “…Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself…” The animals swear on Old Major’s words on page -- and the Seven Commandments that they establish later, on page --. They promise to not participate in any actions that would be done by humans. Contradictory to this, most learn how to read and write, which is an action only done by man. “The reading and writing classes, however, were a great success. By the autumn almost every animal on the farm was literate in some degree.” (Page --) They also have meetings and debates. Without realizing it, the farm is unintentionally portraying human. They also have a leader, which defeats the purpose of being free. In relation to Lord Acton's

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