Examples Of Power In Animal Farm By George Orwell

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As said by Sir John Dalberg-Acton, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. From a historical standpoint, it appears that many powerful leaders are, or become, corrupt. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the plot begins with Old Major predicting a free animal farm where all animals are equal but, ironically, as the plot goes on, the newfound power corrupts the pigs and creates a society where one class dominates all the others. In the beginning, the pigs were good and just leaders that wanted equality, but as they experienced the effects of power, they become more selfish and corrupt, ironic due to their original intentions. The pigs represent the corrupted leaders of the past and how those people will always become corrupted …show more content…
In Animal Farm, the pigs obtain power by ousting Mr. Jones from the farm, but just like their predecessor, the power corrupts the pigs and they slowly create inequality in the farm until the farm becomes a mirror of what it once was under Mr. Jones. This cause and effect reaction becomes an endless cycle of power and corruption. A great example of this in Animal Farm is when the pigs replace all of the seven commandments of the animals with, “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others” (Orwell 85). The pigs in Animal Farm replace the seven commandments with this phrase to fool the other animals of the farm into thinking that it is okay for the pigs to have more power than them. The quote is self-contradictory because while it uses the word “equal”, the meaning of the message implies the opposite, a case of verbal irony. The use of the verbal irony in this situation shows how the power slowly corrupted the pigs and in the end, they were just as corrupt as Mr. Jones. While verbal irony is a significant aspect found in Animal Farm, the situational irony that is also present validates how the power the pigs held slowly corrupted their initial ideals and destroyed the equality they had strived for. Charles May, a notable literary scholar specializing in short story critique, claims “the central irony of the fable is that although the animals initially rebel against the humans because of behavior which humans usually call ‘beastly,’ the animals themselves, as the work progresses, become more and more like humans — that is, more and more base and beastly” (May 11). May supports the importance of irony in Animal Farm by explaining how the whole story develops layers of irony due to how the pigs took power away from the humans only to become worse than them.
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