Animal Farm Review
Napoleon, the pig leader, and Squealer, his oratorical deputy, function as the novel’s engine of manipulative discourse. Working in tandem, they deploy historical negationism (rewriting the Seven Commandments), ad nauseam (repeating bonding cues like “comrades” and fear lines like “Jones will come back”), and ad ignorantiam (uncheckable claims such as “Science proves…”) to reframe history, wear down resistance, and exploit ignorance.
Squealer’s calculated ambiguity narrows what the animals believe they can know, and his repetition manufactures felt truth; together these moves engineer a compliant collective memory that naturalizes pig privilege. Hence the infamous commandment: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
In contrast, Napoleon plays the “bad cop” of authoritarian pragmatics: he rules by scapegoating, casting Snowball as the universal culprit, then turns him into a cautionary myth, and finally memory-holes him through historical negationism and slow-working amnesia. The result mirrors familiar divide-and-conquer tactics that marginalize dissent to consolidate power behind a façade of unity.
The most tragic figure is Boxer. As Fajrina argues, he embodies the proletariat—a good-faith laborer whose low literacy and boundless industriousness make him susceptible to claims that sound rational but function to extract obedience (Fajrina 87). In Orwell’s design, manipulation does not merely influence Boxer’s choices; it pre-chooses them.
Within this language regime, Boxer—like many workers—exemplifies linguistic captivity: “The solution … is to work harder” (Orwell 63) internalizes propaganda as duty, while Clover’s inarticulacy (Orwell 64) shows how gatekeeping through distortion, repetition, and manufactured ignorance enforces deference to authority.
At the end, Squealer’s last and worst lie concerns Boxer: the knacker’s van is recast as a “hospital van,” a cover story that neutralizes the herd’s panic and protects Napoleon. Because the others cannot read or verify the claim, they accept it; even in Boxer’s death, language, and the lack of it, restores narrative control.
While the novel ends bleakly, Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” argues that clarity and precision can initiate political regeneration. Reverse the loop, restore precision, and thought recovers; when thought recovers, power’s linguistic spells begin to fail.
Works Cited
Fajrina, D. “Character Metaphors in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.” Studies in English Language and Education, vol. 3, no. 1, 2016, pp. 79–88.
Merzah, Safaa K. “Linguistic Manipulation in Orwell’s Animal Farm: A Pragma-Stylistic Perspective.” Arab World English Journal, vol. 15, no. 2, 2024, pp. 118–43.
Orwell, George. “Politics and the English Language.” Horizon, Apr. 1946.