Theme Of Pride In Animal Farm

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As I read through Animal Farm, I contemplated several interesting themes, however, there is one recurring idea, or motif, within the entire novel that I found especially fascinating. As a result of its frequent appearance, “pride” is what I have decided to be the most intriguing theme.

Pride has held a great amount of significance in many of the major decisions any of the characters have made. For example, even though life was miserable—almost unbearable on Animal Farm a while after Napoleon seizes control, besides the chickens who rebelled to prevent their eggs from being sold to humans (which was a decision made to protect their pride), there was never anything like a rebellion. As a matter of fact, there were hardly any times when the animals expressed grief to Napoleon and the other pigs at all. Although I will admit that
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Frankly, for the first few chapters, the humans acted very predictably. They quickly became upset due to their damaged egos and underestimated the animals, which lead to their unsurprising defeat, however, after Napoleon gains control over the farm they completely changed strategies and this is what I found intriguing. Similar to the pigs, the humans decided to give up their pride and make civilised interactions with a “lower species” in order to gain profit. For instance, Pilkington pushes aside his bitter feelings about the rebellion and attempts to negotiate getting wood from Animal Farm. To further explain, the reason why this is fascinating is simply because this was just one of several valid options they could have chosen from. An example of a decision they could have made is to continue fighting against Animal Farm. It was completely possible for the humans to win battles against Animal Farm because they had better equipment and had the option to increase in numbers to gain a greater advantage, however, victory over Animal Farm was never considered important