Animal Farm Essay

Tomas Shermer

2 June, 2013

Mr. Hertz

Greed for Power

Wouldn’t you want to have all of the power and fame possible here in the U.S. or even the world? Well that, in a certain way, is what Mr. Jones and Napoleon did in the book, Animal Farm, written by George Orwell. Throughout this essay you will see how Napoleon started to act and make the same mistakes as Mr. Jones had done. This story takes place in the countryside where farm animals want to free themselves from their owner who does not take care of them or himself properly. His name is Mr. Jones.

Mr. Jones was a very irresponsible person who never took a second look at anything but what he wanted most which happened to be alcohol. He was so irresponsible that he hardly ever fed his animals. One night Mr. Jones came back to his farm, drunk with anger and had forgotten to feed his animals that night which made them very frustrated. "Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs. Jones was already snoring" (15). That night an old boar named, Old major had then gathered up all of the animals in the farm so he could give them a speech. He wanted to tell them about a dream he had a couple nights earlier which had them free from the farmer and living a life where everything was equal and no one had a greed for power. Old Major then sang a song with the animals saying, "Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland, beasts of every land and clime, hearken to my joyful tidings of the golden future time..." (22-23). This had then woken up the farmer so he had to get out of bed with his whip to get all of the animals back into their cages and stalls. Even if this plan might come true there was still an animal among them who hungered for power.

That night the animals had planned an attack on Mr. Jones for when he came back the following day during noon. They next day when he had returned to the farm the animals were ready to fight for freedom. First came the geese who bombed the farmer and his friends. Next, all animals went free-for-all knowing that they were in a do-or-die situation. Overall, the animals had driven the farmer and his friends off of their land and had finally claimed victory. "Now as it turned out, the Rebellion was achieved much earlier and more easily than anyone had expected. In past years Mr. Jones, although a hard master, had been a capable farmer, but of late he had fallen on evil days" (28).

Since now the animals were living on their own, they now relied on their rulers who were the pigs (26). They did this because the pigs had been the smartest animals on the farm for many years and they would probably turn out to be very smart rulers too. There were three pigs whose names were squealer, Napoleon, and Snowball. At first, Snowball was the pig in charge of animal farm and did a lot of what the animals wanted to do such as making a windmill. Because of this, Napoleon got very jealous of the power and trust that laid in Snowball’s hands. Even though Snowball was not doing anything wrong and was running the farm very nicely, Napoleon blamed Snowball for doing multiple bad things. He then convinced the dogs that Snowball had done these things so the dogs ran Snowball off the farm. The animals were very confused why Snowball was being ran off the farm, especially since Snowball had been doing a wonderful job running the farm. Squealer then lied to them explaining why Snowball was ran off of the farm. Squealer had said that Snowball was up to mischief and planning to work with Mr. Jones again. This scared the animals enough to believe Squealer and being okay with Napoleon being in charge. Now Napoleon had all of the power and Squealer ended up being his attendant. Over time though they started to act more and more like humans.

Since Napoleon and Squealer were acting more and more like humans, they also were making the same mistakes that Mr. Jones had made which, in one case, was drinking alcohol. "...the sight of Napoleon, on all fours, delivering orders to Whymper, who stood on two legs, roused their pride and partly reconciled them to the new arrangements" (68). They then got very addicted to alcohol and started to make the animals work harder. The pigs were making the animals work harder so they had the money for alcohol and the same amount of food as they had before. The animals felt very disrespected by this decision so, that night, the chickens dropped all of their eggs the the shelves to the ground so Napoleon could not sell them for money or alcohol.

Now you can see that even if there is peace, someone will eventually seize it and take the power everyone else is not taking advantage of. Even though the animals kicked Mr. Jones and his wife off the farm Napoleon then took power. Do you think it is possible for world peace, or do you think that there is always someone with a hunger for power?

Bibliography

• Orwell, George. Animal Farm;. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954. Print.