With no enemies he now
maintains power by lack of
education
Napolean was able to maintain his power with no outbreak
because he can change the commandments on the barn
house, because lack of education, not many animals were
able to understand what i says; The rest weren't able to
remember what the old revolutionaary ideas were.
Quote - pg 66 chapter 8 - Muriel read the commandment
for her. It ran 'No animal shall kill any other animal without
cause'. Somehow the last two words had slipped out of
the animals memory.
This proves that he took advantage of not teaching the
animals so he can use their stupidity to make his life great
and the other animals worse.
1
In the novel Animal farm, Orwell explores the interesting theme of
power and how it can corrupt those who are in possession of it.
Though his skilful use of characterisation, Orwell demonstrates in his
novel how fear and ignorance are often used by unscrupulous and
manipulative characters first of all to gain power and secondly to
maintain it. By the end of the novel, the animals’ early optimism of a
better world has evaporated leaving them to reflect, somewhat
bitterly, “All animals are equal and some are more equal than others”
3
Before to long it is clear that Napolean wants
power to himself, and he would get to that power
anyway he could
It was clear that Napolean wanted power to himself. As
soon as the new puppies were born on the farm, Napolean
took them away to train them for his own personal use; To
get rid of anyone who gets in his way
Quote - enormous dogs came bounding into
the barn. They dashed staright for snowball
These dogs chased Snowball away from the
farm, so he would never return. Napolean
change these small puppies into to fierce
killing machines.
2
Initially Napolean seems to be following
the revolutionary ideas put foward by
Old major
When Old major died the work of taking
charge in the farm rested on Napolean and
Snowball.
Quote - The work of organizing the others
fell naturally upon the pigs, pre-eminent
among the two boars Snowball and
Napolean
Napolean worked as a team to run the farm to get the
trust from all the animals. It looked wanted to work as a
team but it soon became clear that he wanted power to
himself
4
Once in power he becomes more
and more brutal with mass killings
When Napolean was in power he used the
dogs to mass kill people to strike fear against
the other group. Napolean made some animals
"confess' to something they may or may not
have done and killed them infront of everyone
Quote - And so the tales of confessions and
executions went on, until the pile of corpses lying
before Napolean's feet.
Many if not all of these confessions were untrue because
many included snowball but snowball had not been in a long
time. Napolean primarily did this to stike fear between all
animals on the farm
6
Through the characterisation of Napolean Orwell has shown that he agrees with the famous
quote by Bishop Mandell, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely". "Animal farm" may be a piece
of fiction but recent world events have shown that it is sadly very much a piece of fiction
founded on fact: power, it would seem, continues to corrupt many who have it