The Power of Words In 1946 George Orwell wrote the novel, Animal Farm. In this book, Orwell takes advantage of language and words to criticize the effects a totalitarian Russian regime, while some of his characters in the novel use the power of language and words to control a farm that at first, was a great democracy. In Animal Farm, language was a control mechanism, used to encourage, fool, and manipulate. Though language was mainly used for personal gain in this novel, Old Major used language for the opposite reason. He said things that were meant to encourage the rest of the animals on the farm, and they did. Before Old Major died he called a meeting to tell the animals that soon there would be a revolution and that someday the animals would run the farm.
Old Major encouraged the other animals to create a revolt on the farm; he spoke against mankind saying, “Man serves the interests of no creature except himself. And among us animals let there be perfect unity, perfect comradeship in the struggle. All men are enemies. All animals are comrades” (21).
Old Major’s words sounded promising and things went well for awhile, until some animals started taking advantage of the freedom. As the novel progressed, language was beginning to be used for more negative reasons.
The pigs began to take control in a very sly manner. They began to teach the little one’s how to read and work, at a very young age. Napoleon, on the other hand began taking a group of puppies aside as if he was also teaching them how to read, when in fact he was training them to be killers, they would later act as the law enforcement of the animal farm. This goes to show that the pigs began to fool the rest of the animals, and Napoleon was actually fooling everyone. Napoleon had fooled the animals by using Snowball as a scapegoat; he said to them, “Comrades, do you know who is responsible for this? Do you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill? SNOWBALL! Snowball has done this thing. Here and now I pronounce the death sentence upon Snowball” (72).
The Essay on "Animal Farm" Speech – Snowball
Comrades, I stand here before you on this Sunday morning to bring forth my final solicitation to you for the ratification of the building of the windmill. In a minute or so, I will make all the beauties of the windmill known to you. Weeks ago, when I investigated our farm and surveyed the ground, I discovered that the knoll is the highest point on the farm, and it is certainly the ideal place to ...
Also, Napoleon always threatens of Jones’ return as a way of fooling the animals into working more. After fooling the animals for awhile, they decide to fool them in a way that will make them give something in return. Manipulation was the key for the leaders of this farm. Keeping the other animals from thinking too much was their goal. Squealer could be known as the king of manipulation. He was constantly lying to the other animals in order to prevent them from noticing what was going on.
His means of manipulation were very sly saying, “Comrades, you do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege” (97), when talking about the pigs and the certain advantages they were allowing themselves to have. Also, It is shown that Orwell wants to make it known that Squealer is very manipulative by writing, “when arguing some difficult point, he had a way of whisking his tail from side to side, which was somehow very persuasive. The others said he could turn black into white” (40).
Recalling one example of how he manipulated the other animals was when he was describing to the animals in great detail that Napoleon saved the farm in the battle of cowshed. The animals don’t recall this at all, but Squealer insists that this is what had happened, and changed the animal’s minds again.
Language is a very powerful tool. It can be used for positive reasons and negative reasons. In this novel, language is taken severe advantage of by the pigs. They use the power of manipulative language as a control mechanism to fuel their unfaithful intention of ultimately, conquering the Animal Farm.
