Human Condition in Orwell\'s Animal

¶ … Human Condition in Orwell's Animal Farm

George Orwell's novel, Animal Farm, is commentary against socialism. Orwell uses these farm animals to make points about politics and people, all of which are not good or hopeful. The novel explores good intentions and about how long they last in the realm of government or politics. Leaders begin saying one thing but circumstances always change and promises are broken as the need to control becomes an addiction that must be fed. The idea of all being created equal is nice but it is not true, as the novel suggests.

Orwell points to frailties in the human spirit with the animals. Greed is one and we see this when Napoleon Positions himself in front of the milk buckets, diverting attention to the harvest because it is "more important" (19). He directs Snowball to lead the animals away, so he can take the milk for himself. Here he is dishonoring one of the basic fundamentals of animalism by being greedy. Education also becomes important in the book because education morphs from a tool of enlightenment to an object of oppression because the pigs are "generally recognized as being the cleverest of the animals" (35). The Seven Commandments of Animalism become a way for the pigs to get what they want when they want it. Class oppression is what makes the world go round in Orwell's view and we see this through the pigs. They learn to walk on two legs, sleep in beds, wear real clothes and drink alcohol. They are the ones that tainted the original commandments. In a sense, they are the ones that screwed everything up but they did so in the name of power because their greed skewed their vision. Orwell's point is that this kind of thing happens far too often.

The concluding scene of the novel is one of the most shocking because ultimately reveals that there will always be pigs in every society and there is nothing anyone can do about that. It is simply human nature. These pigs will be the ones attempting to gain all of the power and control the rest of the population. The image of the humans and the pigs being indistinguishable points to the frailty of the human condition and it declares that this condition cannot be "fixed" and it will lead to humanity's downfall in one way or another. Power and greed only make people more power hungry and greedy. There can be no equals in this kind of society because people, regardless of we like it or not, are simply not equal. There will always be those with more and there will always be those with less. Additionally, there will always be those that want to control everything and those who allow that control to occur.