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Leadership and Ideology in Animal Farm Essay

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The Theme of Leadership in Animal Farm

Sub-theme: Power Corrupts

The sub theme of power corrupting people is very eminent in animal farm. The leaders on the farm - the pigs, were the brains of the farm. The animals let the pigs lead the farm, thereby placing them into a position of power. This power corrupted them as they became more and more greedy and their ideology became more and more corrupted. Also, the pig’s transgressions of the rules of animalism worsen as they grow in power.
In chapter 2, when the 7 commandments were first written down, there was already a slight corruption in the pigs. The pigs steal the milk and apples and explain it with the lie that these foods have nutrients essential to pigs, which need these
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An obvious example would be Stalin, or Hitler, both who claimed to be helping their countries to break off from oppression, but they themselves became the oppressors. Orwell wants to show that if a leader is always allowed to do whatever he wants, or if he is not kept in check, the leader will start to get corrupted.. This is a vicious cycle as the more power the leaders amass, the more corrupted they become. The more corrupted they become, the more power they amass.

This sub-theme is treated carefully and crafted well by George Orwell as after all, it is one of the most important ideas Orwell is trying to convey in the book. The 7 commandments were created by Orwell so that the reader would be able to clearly see the gradual corruption in the pigs as the got more powerful. Orwell also crafted many incidents into the story where the reader would be able to catch a glimpse of the pigs’ corruption. One example of such an incident is when the pigs steal the milk and apples. Another incident is the end scene, where there was no way the animals could tell which was pig and which was man. Also, he uses irony to convey this theme, as can be seen from the milk and apples incident and also the incident where Squealer takes the sheep somewhere to “re-educate” them when he was in fact brainwashing them into learning the new
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