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Janneza King

Mr. Disney / 5

English I MYP

13 Oct 2006

Animal Farm: Analyzing Irony

        In the allegorical work, by George Orwell, he presents the rise and recession of power in a lifestyle dictated by an overbearing tyrant.  The author builds characters’ personalities with irony to strengthen the directed ridicule.  With Napoleon and Snowball always disagreeing on pointless issues, irony plays a key role in the delivery of each scene.  Their endless arguments, hypocritical attitudes, and the figurative beings each of the pigs represented with their motives, enabled readers to fall in the seduction of Orwell’s vigorous diction. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, he utilizes different types of irony to expose a truth to world, that in any society, the corruption of power inevitably causes history to repeat itself.

        As the established commandments are secretly altered to coincide with the pigs’ new lifestyle, the animals notice that life commences to “readjust” frequently and some try to recall what life was like before the rebellion. (115) the pigs, namely Napoleon, maniacally begin to experiment with the manner of human ways, and as a result he and his fellow kind are engulfed in the potency of unrestricted control. As the pigs become increasingly authoritative, they abuse power to dictate everyone and everything on the farm. Here Orwell uses dramatic irony to show the naivety of the farm animals with his illusive way of explaining Napoleon’s and his inner circle’s gradual change for the worst.  The first idea of self obtained order on the farm originated from Old Major, a wise boar and prophet, he narrated his dream of a life where there would never be a food shortage or animals being sent to death before their time. (28) Old Major continued his speech by explaining to them why Man was the enemy. “Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever.” (29) This intrigued the animals and persuaded them to look for the nearing apocalypse. “Man is the only creature that consumes without producing.” (29) With this statement they all began to realize how greatly Man depended on them, in a realization they came upon the fact that Man in reality needed them more than the animals needed Man.  Before Old Major’s downfall, he represented to the animals the fact that they are the foundation of the farm and man was disposable.

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Once the rebellion and transformation of power had occurred, the animals strive to make the farm the sanctuary that was once foretold in a vision, but when Snowball is exiled from Animal Farm, there is no longer a figure of authority to repress Napoleon’s tyrannical ideas.  The once voided plans of constructing the windmill were hypocritically set into action, by Napoleon, after Snowball was banished.  Succeeding the erection of the windmill, Napoleon personally congratulated the animals on their achievement and announced that the windmill be named Napoleon Mill. (104) Orwell manipulates verbal irony to announce through Napoleon, to the reader, ...

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