As I re-read Animal Farm by George Orwell, I get an eerie reminder of what the history might be at my own job as a restaurant waiter. Try to fill in the blanks or connect the dots. Snowball is one of the pigs, driven away by the other pig, Napoleon. Snowball was the pig that proposed the idea of a windmill for the farm, an idea Napoleon was against. He was so against it that he chased Snowball away with some wild dogs. While Snowball is away, Napoleon makes himself the leader and starts to make changes.
Keep in mind, I’m leaving out crucial plot elements in Animal Farm itself. My aim isn’t to give an exhaustive plot outline; I’m just isolating those parts that I think are a pretty good allegory for what might have happened where I work. Anyway, after Snowfall is driven away, Napoleon takes charge. Before Snowball’s exile, the animals held meetings to come up with ideas, solve problems, and find solutions. But now that Napoleon is in charge, there is a committee of pigs.
At one of their committee meetings, Napoleon deceives the animals, saying that the windmill-idea was stolen from him by Snowball! The windmill symbolizes a better life, so the animals work harder to make that symbol a reality. But a storm comes by and destroys it: Napoleon tells the animals that Snowball destroyed it! Snowball becomes the fall guy for the windmill’s downfall. Anyone heard taking Snowball’s side is killed or exiled from the farm.
Under Napoleon’s rule, things don’t get easier. The animals’ toil gets harder, the pigs get more and more control, and the pigs reserve for themselves more and more privileges. History is rewritten: Snowball is vilified, while Napoleon is glorified. Even though the animals’ toil is excessive and they’re starving and cold, they’re brainwashed enough to believe that they have a better life under Napoleon rather than the farmer, Mr. Jones.
After some years and the events leading up to and after Boxer’s death, the pigs can walk on two feet now; they whip the disobedient and are even wearing clothes. What were before The Seven Commandments (of Animalism: one of which was “All animals are equal.”) is now a single commandment: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
The animals begin to see, during a poker game between the humans and the pigs, that when you really look at the face, the pigs and the humans actually look quite similar: that you can’t really tell them apart. Isn't it ironic that Boxer's best friend is a donkey, Benjamin, the wisest of the animals, and the one who is all alone in discerning revolution? Benjamin. Think about it.
Fill in the blanks; connect the dots.
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This is why "the Republic" is so important.
ReplyDeleteIt demonstrates the great paradox: the city created to be perfect is inevitably imperfect (even more, harmful and subversive).
Napoleon's will always come to power and spread deceit (even in the name of good!).
We are ultimately powerless to alter the consequence unless we kill all the pigs. Even then, the society you create in blood will rot faster than before.