Rhetorical Devices In Animal Farm

Animal Farm begins on Manor Farm, where overworked, tired, and hungry animals are unhappy in the conditions that they are in, but when an old boar named Old Major introduces the idea of a rebellion and encourages the animals to take control over the farm, the animals begin an uprising against the humans, taking control over the land and renaming the farm “Animal Farm.” However, greedy and corrupt leaders rise to power and turn a once prosperous farm, into a nightmare. In Animal Farm, George Orwell asserts the idea that absolute power results in corruption. Napoleon and the other pigs, interested in remaining superior, persuades the other animals by using intimidation and emotional appeals in order to keep control of the gullible animals.

George Orwell's goal in writing the novel Animal Farm was to portray the events surrounding the Russian revolution that took place in 1917. Orwell's tale of Animal Farm is seemingly a story of how a group of farmyard animals plot to overthrow their owner and seize control of the land. The novel seems to be a simple story, however Orwell wrote this book as an allegory, a story that has a clear secondary meaning beneath is literal sense. Everything in Animal Farm is used to represent people and events that took place during the Russian revolution from 1917-1939. Orwell chose to represent Russia's three famous leaders during this time with three pigs. Each three are drastically different and have dissimilar

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.

People are intrigued by a book through its content. However, when a reader can relate to the book, it reminds them of their own life story. This is exactly what Orwell did when writing Animal Farm. He created the book to open people’s eyes and see what was really going on in front of them. Animal Farm intrigues so many people because though it is a fiction book, it is based on true events that happened in Russia. Animal Farm, a book based on Stalin’s Russia, can be interpreted in several ways: the similar characteristics between Stalin and Napoleon, the animal parallels, and the parallel between Stalin’s Russia (USSR) and the Animal Farm.

The undeniable greed Napoleon possesses can only be fulfilled by giving the other animals the illusion of bettering themselves by not questioning his logic: “Boxer, who had now had time to think things over, voiced the general feeling by saying, ‘If Comrade Napoleon says it, it must be right.’ And from then on he adopted the maxim, ‘Napoleon is always right,’ in addition to his private motto of ‘I will work harder’” (Orwell 60). Because Animal Farm’s audience predominantly consists of working class citizens, they begin to feel sympathy for Boxer since he cannot recognize Napoleon is exploiting him exclusively for his personal goal of becoming a puissant leader; therefore, animosity towards Napoleon develops in the audience. Considering the animals promptly welcome Napoleon’s promise of a better life, they work towards exhaustion, unknowingly fueling Napoleon’s greed: "All that year the animals worked like slaves. But they were happy in their work; they grudged no effort or sacrifice, well aware that everything that they did was for the benefit of themselves and those of their kind who would come after them, and not for a pack of idle, thieving human beings" (63). Although the animals working for Napoleon are unaware he is gradually becoming more human and willfully betraying his fellow animals for his own benefit, it is evident to the audience that Napoleon is corrupt. As Napoleon cunningly achieves power, his greed continues to grow, the same as a totalitarian leader’s:

Animal Farm is a novella written by George Orwell in 1945. This particular story by George Orwell reflects on the events leading up to and during Stalin era in Russia. During the time he wrote, the work of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto was being followed by the Russian leaders, and some of Marx’s ideas can be found in the way George Orwell’s character, Old Major, expresses the way animal’s future should be.

In the passage of Animal Farm, Squealer, constantly using various persuasive techniques such as repetition, plain folks, rhetorical questions, appeal to reason, appeal to emotion and appeal to authority, convincing the other animals that their ex “comrade” Snowball was a traitor and had deceived them since the beginning of the revolution. When using these Logical Fallacy’s, he successfully convinces the rest of the animals to believe and continue following the leadership of their fellow “comrade” Napoleon.

Most of us communicate with others with words every day, using words as a tool to transfer messages. In the book Animal Farm, however, the language was used as a powerful weapon to strengthen the dominated dictatorship of Napoleon. Orwell explored the problem of rhetoric in Animal Farm by narrating how Napoleon and Squealer used words to placate other animals because their words effectively consolidated their power. This essay will demonstrate the rhetoric power in Animal Farm by presenting three examples.

Bill Clinton once said, “The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of truth.” How did the tactics the pigs used towards the animals manipulate and prevent them from seeing the truth? The pigs tried to control the animals by appealing to their ethics, emotions, and logic by using rhetoric and propaganda. These tactics manipulated the animals to become easily deceived since they blindly listened to the pigs just because they were scared for Mr. Jones to come back. For instance, the animals had become so blindly manipulated, that they didn’t realize they were living in much worse or the same conditions after Mr. Jones left. The rhetorical tactics that the pigs used towards the animals instilled fear in many of the animals making it easier to manipulate them.

Absolute power cannot be achieved without manipulation. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the animals start a rebellion, overthrowing Jones. After the revolution, the pigs take charge, to guide the farm to a better life. Using propaganda to maintain the dominance over the animals, the masses follow the pigs’ beliefs. Pinpointing the enemy, rhetorical questions, and lying are various techniques used to trick the others into following their judgment.

In Animal Farm, Orwell demonstrates the need for education by showing that since some of the animals have the inability to read and understand information that has been put in front of them, even if they wanted to challenge what the pigs were saying and stand up for themselves, they could not. The pigs use many forms of propaganda to control the animals and because the animals are not fully aware of what’s going on around them, they do not noticed how completely they are being controlled and there are the select few that do, but just do not care. Through all this Orwell demonstrates how truly oblivious the citizens truly are to the ways of the government and shows what was happening during the russian revolution and how the government got to be so completely in power.

a. Animal Farm is an allegory, which is a story in which concrete and specific characters and situations stand for other characters and situations in order to make a point of them. The main plot of Animal Farm stands for the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the early years of the Soviet Union in which animalism is actually communism. Each character stands for a certain figure, or group of people in the Russian Revolution. Most of them stand for important political figures.

In the novella Animal Farm, the timeline of early 1900s Russia unfolds in an allegory, with revolutionists Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx sparking a rebellion against Czar Nicholas II. Subsequently, a social democratic party known as the Bolsheviks overthrew the czar, aided by two significant leaders: Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. Even so, the newfound ideology of communism that Stalin introduced and quickly corrupted through propaganda proved to be just as oppressive as the reign of Nicholas II. Most importantly, this corruption and oppression was elucidated by British author George Orwell through the use of rhetorical devices in the allegorical satire Animal Farm, where the audience receives a glimpse into the cunning caricature of

“Animal Farm” by George Orwell is an allegorical novel published on England in 1945. According to the author, this book reflects historical events leading up and during the Stalin era before World War II. It is the story of a revolution which goes wrong, based on the Russian revolution and Stalin’s use of power, the overall message is that man’s desire for power makes a classless society impossible. In the book, each animal represents a public figure or a type of person in real life. With this we can begin to develop the questions below in order to have a more complete idea of the meaning of the novel.

What is the definition of a good novel? Opinions on this question may differ, but there are many things that good novels have in common. Most importantly, the reader must enjoy the novel. When I use the word enjoy, I don’t necessarily mean that it should make the reader ‘happy’ or ‘joyful’. The novel should give the reader a valuable or worthwhile experience. Many good novels often address topics that relate to our own reality. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, one of the main focuses is on power and corruption.