Operant Conditioning In George Orwell's Animal Farm

A normal day under Napoleon's rule is attending morning meetings then performing their specified jobs. The oppressed animals are constantly watched by the ferocious watch dogs making them scared to freely voice their opinion. However, the frequent chant of “Napoleon is always right” (Orwell 48) contradicts their first thought of Napoleon’s odd way of ruling. Squealer reminds the animals with the following statement “One false step, and our enemies would be upon us. Surely, comrades, you do not want Jones back” (Orwell 56). Squealer persistently tells his fellow comrades to follow the rules, if they do not want the farm to fail. The thought of Jones coming back makes the animals fearful of failing. Napoleon continues to gain trust from the comrades because there is no animal, on the farm, willing to go against their leader.

Operant Conditioning Theory by B.F. Skinner is a psychological manipulation using rewards and punishments to enforce positive behavior. It uses an individual person’s response to events or stimulus. When a particular Stimulus-Response pattern is rewarded, the individual is conditioned to respond. The distinctive characteristic of operant conditioning is related to previous forms of behaviorism. The Operant Conditioning theory comprises of neutral operants, positive/negative reinforcers, and positive/negative punishers. Through these factors, we get the desired behavior of our subject because they do not want to be punished for under performing so they do what they’re told to or do more of what they were assigned to to receive positive stimulus

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the pigs are in control. Napoleon became the official leader after Snowball was chased out by the dogs. Squealer, Napoleon’s sidekick, now has social control over the farm animals. Squealer uses language to confuse and persuade the animals into thinking the commandments did not change, humans are allies and not enemies, and that some animals are more equal than others.

I have decided to explore the theme of how ‘Fear is a powerful motivator’. Different leaders and influential people have various ways of using fear to motivate people. Two of my texts: ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell, and ‘The Rise of Evil” directed by Christian Duguay, both show how totalitarian leaders used violence to motivate the public. The other texts: ‘Bowling for Columbine’ directed by Michael Moore, and ‘Who’s for the Game’ by Jesse Pope, both show how two different influential people motivated the public without using violence, instead creating fear using words.

George Orwell’s Animal Farm is, first and foremost, a political satire warning against the pursuit of utopian desires through unjust and oppressive means. Operating under the pretense of an animal fable, Orwell disparages the use of political power to poach personal freedom. He effectively alerts his readers to the dangerous price that can accompany the so-called “pursuit of progress”. And he illuminates how governments acting under the guise of increasing independence often do just the opposite: increase oppression and sacrifice sovereignty. While the cautionary theme Orwell provides proves widely applicable, in reality his novel focuses on one tale of totalitarian abuse: Soviet Russia. The parallels between the society Orwell presents in his Animal Farm and the Soviet Union – from the Russian revolution to Stalin’s supremacy – are seemingly endless. Manor Farm represents Tsarist Russia, Animalism compares to Stalinism, and Animal Farm, with the pig Napoleon at its helm, clearly symbolizes Communist Russia and Joseph Stalin. But Orwell does more than simply align fiction with fact. He fundamentally attacks Soviet Russia at its core. And in so doing he reveals how the Communist Party simply replaced a bad system with a worse one, overthrowing an imperial autocracy for a totalitarian dictatorship. This essay will demonstrate that Orwell’s Animal Farm is

Elie Wiesel in Night and Snowball from Animal Farm are very similar characters because they were victimized by tyrants and used as scapegoats, but they are also unique and individual characters because Elie knew he was being taken advantage of and Snowball did not. Animal Farm is written by George Orwell, and it is about a farm of animals that take over the farm. Napoleon, a large pig, slowly takes away food and supplies from the other animals until he starts walking on two feet and becomes a “human.” Because of him Snowball is expelled from the farm and acts as a scapegoat for everything that goes wrong on the farm. Night is an autobiography written by Elie Wiesel, and in it Elie tells the story of he was taken from his home and put into a concentration camp under the control of Adolf Hitler.

People respond to control and power differently for various reasons, however, one of the main reasons is based on their personality; their confidence and intelligence. In, Animal Farm by George Orwell, confidence and intelligence is a big factor for why certain animals obtained power and control and why other ones did not. People with confidence and intelligence are likely to gain most of the control and power. People with little intelligence, but lots of confidence are more likely to have some power or work underneath the leader. People with intelligence, but no confidence seem to have no power at all and shy away from it. Both intelligence and confidence are needed for someone to take total power. Therefore, the amount of confidence and intelligence a person has will decide how they respond to control and power.

Skinner (1948) was also influenced by Thorndike’s (1898) operant conditioning of cats and went on to use similar techniques to study conditioning in rats. Skinner studied how behaviour that is rewarded will be repeated, unlike behaviour that has a negative consequence. Skinner (1948) placed hungry rats in a ‘skinner box’ with a lever, when the lever was pressed, food was released and the rats soon learned that when they pressed the lever they would be rewarded. Skinner (1948) then placed rats in another box and administered them with an electric current. If the rats pressed the lever in this box it would stop the discomfort of the current. After repeating the rats quickly learnt to press the lever. Skinner (1948) argued that all human behaviour can be learned through operant conditioning (McLeod 2015).

“In past years Mr. Jones, although a hard master, had been a capable farmer, but of late he had fallen on evil days”(Orwell 38). In Animal Farm George Orwell describes life for the animals on a farm in the english countryside during the mid to early 20th century before, during and after a revolution against their master Mr.Jones in order to represent the russian revolution and describe to people throughout the free world how leaders in both capitalist and communist societies oppress the working class as a result Orwell 's tone throughout the novel is concerned. Tsar Nicholas II led Russia into failure in the Russo-Japanese war as well as World War I and allowed the shootings of over one thousand protesters on Bloody Sunday; these actions inspired Orwell to create a representation of tsar Nicholas II in the character Mr.Jones who is known for being drunk and forgetful.

Operant conditioning is a theory put forward by Thorndike. This theory waits for a desired behaviour to occur and then rewards it. It builds somewhat on the work done by Watson regarding trial and error learning. Perhaps the most prominent or influential behaviourist work is that done by Skinner. Skinner adopted an operant approach to behaviourism and famously conducted experiment using rats in specially designed boxes. Skinner’s ideas revolved around the presence of a reinforcer to cause a desired behaviour to be repeated. This could be in the form of a primary reinforcer (a basic need like food) or a secondary reinforcer (such as money or praise). In the case of his rats, Skinner effectively trained them to pull certain levers to release food. Initially, the release was accidental but after a while, the rats learned to associate the arrival of food with the pressing of a lever. Skinners work revolved heavily around the need for reinforcement, reward, punishment and feedback. The scheduling and delivery of these things was also important to Skinner who suggested the timing of something like a reward was paramount to its success at brining about long term changes in behaviour. Similarly, he suggested giving punishment should occur immediately after the event in question and in a consistent manner. Also, it was skinner who introduced the concept of successive approximations – small

All boars may seem the same, but are they really? Is it possible to find both similarities and differences between individual boars? In the book, Animal Farm, by George Orwell, the animals on a typical English farm overthrew the human farmer and began running the farm themselves. Napoleon, a quiet boar who tended to get what he wanted, and Snowball, lively and innovative boar, saw this as an opportunity to gain power and used their persuasive skills to help control the other animals. The characters of Napoleon and Snowball used both similar and different persuasive techniques to influence the animals' actions.

Frank Herbert once said,“Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.” Herbert is claiming that the less individuals know, the easier it is to manipulate the truth. This concept is often a recurrent theme in literature. George Orwell’s Animal Farm exposes the negative effects that governments demonstrating tyranny could have on people-- harsh forms of control, manipulation, and propaganda.

Throughout time, we have witnessed the destruction and reconstruction of governments such as the Russian Revolution and more recently, The Egyptian Revolution. Blind conformity is a useful asset to having control over a country. To have your people comply with any idea is the perfect position for any leader. A similarity that these powerful leaders possess is the ability to differentiate between their people's weaknesses and strengths. In George Orwell's Animal Farm, Napoleon utilizes many forms of manipulation to his advantage, which leads to blind conformity practiced by animals of Manor Farm.

Claim: The society in Animal Farm, by George Orwell and America, in “Of History and Hope,” by Miller Williams, obfuscate history to manipulate memory. However, in Animal Farm, the goal of this change is to manipulate the society into falsely remembering the past to keep them ignorant and under control, and in “Of History and Hope,” the goal is to manipulate America into remembering the sacrifices and struggles in order to continue to learn, grow, and be free.

Wealth plays a big part in manipulation. People or countries with money seem to be in control. This is because they have the best of everything, if its technology, equipment, lawyers, anything you can think of they are going to have it and win. In Animal farm money doesn't play a role but in terms of manipulation to those who don't have power it certainly does! In the books situation the pigs would be the ones with all the money living the high life.The fortunate people with money have access to everything and have the benefits of warm clothes, a roof over our heads, a meal to come home to every night and medicine to help us get better when we are sick. In third world countries such as Africa and the Philippines people only have limited access