Religion in Animal Farm: Real or Just Another Trick?

One of the most crucial reasons people in positions of power use doublespeak is to twist the truth or reality of a negative situation to their audience. William J. Kopple, professor and department cochairman of English at Calvin College, is author of the paper “Still Vigilant about Doublespeak?” featured in the Language Arts Journal

The use of propaganda and double-speaking have a long history, going back to the ancient societies. Propaganda and doublespeak are the use of verbal exchange to have an effect on the emotions, attitudes, and opinions of human beings. To try to get them to accept a particular political, religious, or financial point of view, or even to start a war. It is careful manipulation of the opinions of the societies mostly by their government. In the effort to control the nation 's thought process, the government has stemmed to using mass propaganda for selling a war.

Many of the characters and events of Orwell's novel are parallel those of the Russian Revolution: In short, Manor Farm is a model of Russia, and old Major, Snowball, and Napoleon represent the dominant figures of the Russian Revolution. They were very violent and just wanted to push it off like nothing happened. One of Orwell's goals in writing Animal Farm was to illustrate the Russian Revolution of 1917 as one that resulted in a government more oppressive, totalitarian, and deadly.

George Orwell's novel, Animal Farm, was his very first piece of political writing. On the surface, this novel is about a group of miserable and mistreated farm animals that overthrow their neglectful owner; they take control of the farm. However, it too is a political allegory mainly focusing on the Russian Revolution. Orwell wrote Animal Farm in response to what had occurred in the Russian Revolution. Seeing how the people were being manipulated over for their freedom, he decided to write about these events through farm animals. The author's purpose for writing this novel is to warn his audience that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutly. Orwell's intent in fusing political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole, was truly

Orwell effectively conveys the rise of communism in Russia throughout the book Animal Farm by the accurate elucidation of the context in the Soviet Union from 1917-1945. Orwell’s attitude and political view towards Russia is evident in his representation of the farm animals on Communist Party leaders: Napoleon and Snowball, for example, are figurations of Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, respectively. He expresses the anthropomorphic characters of farm animals, and major events in Animal Farm such as the Rebellion and the construction of the windmill, reminiscent of the Russian Revolution and the “Five-Year Plans”. Orwell also uses many techniques to describe the crucial points in Animal Farm by metaphoric language and allegorical means

Orwell uses the allegory, Animal Farm, to present the story of The Russian Revolution and essentially express his opinions on the matter. By plainly exposing the unjust and corrupt system that is communism, Orwell is ultimately presenting his pessimistic view of human nature.

“Doublespeak” can be seen frequently in the world of 1984. The party’s big slogan “WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” (George Orwell, 4) is an good example. The idea of the slogan is to convince the citizens that what they want, is what they already have. Only war can make peace and harmony, so peace is no longer peace, it becomes war; anyone who is slaved and wants freedom, he already has freedom; you can only strengthen yourself by not knowing things and being ignorant. The slogan changes truth and make the citizens believe that anything they want other than what their government wants can only make them unhappy, therefore, no one will consider rebellion because they believe the Party’s way of governing is the best and only way. “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” (George Orwell, 3) is

The use of propaganda and doublespeak have a long history, going back to the ancient societies. Propaganda and doublespeak are the use of verbal exchange to have an effect on the emotions, attitudes, and opinions of human beings. To try to get them to accept a particular political, religious, or financial point of view, or even to start a war. It is careful manipulation of the opinions of the societies mostly by their government. In the effort to control the nation 's thought process, the government has used mass propaganda for selling a war.

Orwell, in his story Animal Farm explains the reality of Stalinist Russia by exposing how the welfare of the individual is dismissed due to a dominant and repressive ideology. The novel follows a linear narrative structure, calmly told, allowing the reader to monitor the increasing power of the pigs and the consequent erosion of the rights of the other animals. The regular description of the weather and seasons contributes to the chronological narrative while acting metaphorically to capture the mood and condition of the animals. The initial success of the revolution, ‘By Autumn the animals were tired but happy’, contrasts with the reality years later, ‘Meanwhile life was hard. The winter was as cold as the last one had been.’ The joy of liberation captured in the accumulation of verbs and repetition of ‘they’ , ‘…they hurled themselves into the air…They rolled in the dew,…’is short lived. Dramatic irony presents the disparity when it is decided the milk and apples ‘should be reserved for the pigs alone’ and marks the gradual erosion of conditions, ‘Starvation seemed to stare them in the face.’ An imperative tone, ‘No animal shall drink alcohol to excess’, highlights the increasing corruption of the pigs and contradiction of the seven commandments. The breaking of each commandment symbolises the parallel journey of the pigs to a dictatorship and the animals to destitution and oppression. Contrast

In the essay “Doubts About Doublespeak”(1993), William Lutz depicts how utilizing doublespeak can damage a society. Lutz begins with providing examples of doublespeak that range from silly to serious, showing how doublespeak can be harmless, but also disguise a truth with a manipulation of words. There are many different types of doublespeak, Lutz breaks it down into four different categories euphemism, jargon, gobbledygook and inflated language. By breaking them down, Lutz shows the audience that they share similarities in which they make something negative sound better than it is. There are more types of doublespeak that can be seen all around us, moreover, as more doublespeak is being created everyday and everywhere it becomes difficult

The Russian Orthodox Church supported the White Army which in the end was the losing side of the Russian Civil War after the October Revolution. The Soviet government saw the church as a "counter-revolutionary" organization. The Soviet government also believed the church had a great influence on society. Even though the Soviet Union claimed religious tolerance, the government still discouraged organized religion and tried its best to remove religious influence from Soviet society.

Animal farm is a renowned, allegorical novella written by George Orwell in 1945, which can be interpreted to have a hidden political meaning behind it referring to the Russian Revolution. Throughout this novella, the author purposely positions the audience to make judgements based on sensible, moral perception to show that Orwell effectively revealed how the pigs exploited a vast majority of propaganda techniques to deceptively manipulate the values, attitudes and beliefs of the other animals, with full intention of complete social control. This was exposed to the reader when the three main values of ‘Animalism’, as outlined in Old Major's speech, which consists of freedom, unity and equality, are abused for the pigs own advantage. This task

He explains that the cause of doublespeak is usually to evade making a problematic situation sound very bad. For example, “in 1984 the US State Department announced it would no longer use the word ‘killing’ in its annual report on the status of human rights around the world”(par. 7). By doing this, it eludes the readers into believing that the US does not have relations with nations that kill people. Although the US continues to have relations with nations that kill people, the statements refer to those nations as those that have “unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life” happening instead of murder. This effect results in tricking the people into false assumptions of the US’s relations with other

In Russia religion's influence was much different. There wasn't much influence at all in the period of 1815 to 1919. Czar Alexander proposed the Holy Alliance under which monarchs would pledge themselves to rule according to Christian teachings; here alot of them didn't have any sincerity, especially Alexander. Religion also intensified things as in France, Russia decided to intervene when the Greeks revolted against the Turks, claiming the need to protect fellow Christians from the Muslims. Russia has been Communist for a very long time already, and as such they are atheistic and they also persecuted organized religion as a rival for the people's loyalty. But since the collapse of Communist for reasons other than religion, it has allowed churches to practice freely, like the Russian Orthodox, have shown a surprising amount of popular support.

Animal Farm is an allegory to communist Russia throughout the early to mid 1900s. Led by Old Major, a wise pig that represents Karl Marx, the founder of the socialism, the animals on Manor Farm try to establish a self-sufficient farm run by animals with no outside human contact. This “self-sufficient farm” called Animal Farm was focused on creating a system where everyone is equal and happy, and no animal could be above any other animal. However, what happened in Russia as well as other communist countries, was that the interim government that existed to facilitate the change to socialism became venal and didn't care or pay attention to the social equality of all the people. The interim government, represented by pigs in Animal Farm did not give up their power, leading to the oppressive governmental system called communism. Additionally, in Animal Farm, the communist “pigs”, Snowball and Napoleon, did not pay attention to the growing social gap as they grew more powerful on the farm and ended up going against their original philosophies to keep all animals