In Animal Farm, how is language important for gaining power.

Essay by Kotoro1234Junior High, 9th gradeA, April 2014

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Language is a very powerful tool that can be manipulated to become an instrument of control. Put differently, it can become a resource for accumulating great amounts of power, but if abused, can eventually lead to huge adversities. A quintessential example of this is the novel Animal Farm, by George Orwell. In this novel, a pig, which is the leader of animals on a farm, sets out his Utopian ideals of what might become of the future of Animal Farm. However, what starts great at first, slowly leads to a major catastrophe, a social decline of the animal society. The reason behind this was the usage of language, and the abuse of the power that came with it. It is observable how language comes hand in hand with power, by looking at how Napoleon and Squealers utilized propaganda techniques. Firstly, when we examine the character Napoleon we can see that although he was an unskilled public speaker, he still used various propaganda techniques in order to obtain power. One example is shown through the following quote, "Do you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill? Snowball!", which conveys how Napoleon blames the destruction of the windmill on Snowball, even though it was in fact a storm that caused this. Napoleon put the farms failure on Snowball who wasn't present (so he couldn't deny anything), so that in the eyes of the animals, Snowball's status was reshaped from a genuine leader, to a common enemy. This, on the other hand, would serve Napoleon's desired effect of making himself seem like the great leader, the protector of the animals. This is evident in the following quote, "Comrades, here and now I pronounce the death sentence upon Snowball....The animals were shocked beyond measure to learn that...