Animal Farm

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During chapters 7-10 Orwell goes to great lengths to show sympathy for the animals in animal farm. He achieves this by using different techniques which I am going to show you.

George Orwell based Animal Farm on the Russian revolution which occurred many years beforehand. Orwell tries to make us feel pathos for the animals to show what the Russian revolution was like for the people affected by it.

In chapters seven to ten the animals have to work harder than ever and one wrong move would take them to the chopping board.

One quote which stands out for classical satire of the Russian revolution is “ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.” (Chapter 10, pg. 112) This quote makes people feel pathos for the animals because they would think that they were only on the farm to serve Napoleon and build windmills whilst the pigs whop were obviously better off just lazed around or did less of the work. The animals blamed their faulty memories for forgetting the commandment. At this point the animals would probably feel that they were hard done by in the reign of napoleon. Orwell has done well to create pity for the animals here.

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“The truest happiness, he said, lay in working hard and living frugally” (Chapter 10, pg. 107) this quote is written by the pigs who lived the best lives whilst doing the exact opposite, the animals would feel that they would own good lives and if that was as happy as life gets it wasn’t worth living. The animals were unhappy with the way they lived and knew that this was not true.

"Besides, in those days they had been slaves and now they were free, and that made all the difference, as Squealer did not fail to point ...

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The Quality of Written Communication here is poor, as apparently deliberately so. The candidate, and all other future candidate must take note that it is appalling to think that use of "knackers" is acceptable in an English exam. As an English GCSE student, candidate by definition should not use colloquial language or slang terms in their answer. This must be regarded in high attention if the candidates are to score highly in the QWC areas of the mark scheme.

The Level of Analysis here is fair, but there is not enough to gain much higher than a low C grade. The candidate makes a good attempt at analysing the creation of pathos but their answer is not structured very well. A better candidate might focus on three or four main points from the novel, rather than plucking at random moments and themes that Orwell explores and writing a couple of lines on each. As the saying goes - "Quality, not Quantity". This means that if the candidate chose to concentrate on fewer aspects of the creation of pathos and analyse them in great detail, they will elicit more marks than what this candidate has done, which is dive puddle-deep into various analyses that don't get fully explored and therefore does not provide the great in-depth analysis and insight required to reach higher than a C.

This answer is in response to a question asking how Orwell creates pathos for the animals of 'Animal Farm'. The answer is nicely focused at first, but slips a little in it's written clarity, meaning that a lot of it's focus and analytical depth (where there is any) is derailed quite substantially. The focus is very important in an analytical essay, and this candidate makes a very good effort by re-using the word "pathos". This is a good exercise if done well because it shows the examiner the candidate is constantly referring to the question, but at the same time the analysis must very directly relate to the creation of pathos in this example, or else good analysis made to pose as something else leads to a poor answer.