Topic: Discuss the ways the ideals animal farm begins with are corrupted.
Contention: it’s the pigs in animal farm that change the ideals and dreams
3 arguments:
- Equality changes to dictatorship
- The changing of the commandments
- The idea of freedom becomes slavery
They say dreams are the most important thing to a person animal or not it’s what keeps you driving towards a goal and if you think about it keeps you from boredom or even insanity. But in George Orwell‘s Animal farm it’s the pigs that change the ideals and dreams because things as they do naturally change. Equality changes into dictatorship, the commandments change from pleasant to obscene and the idea of freedom becomes slavery. Which all show the power hungry, hypercritical ways of the pigs. It’s almost like racism how we say everyone’s equal but there are still those who think better of themselves then others.
Equality changes into a dictatorship which corrupts the ideals in animal farm because the pigs think they are better and much more important than everybody else on the farm. Slowly and slyly the pigs made these changes to the equality starting off by taking the milk and the apples for themselves all because according to squealer “Milk and apples (this has been proved by science comrades) to contain substances absolutely necessary to the well being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers.” Then this gradually turned into the pigs taking over all the animals’ lives and even acting like humans so the rebellion was for nothing. But the equality was not the only thing that changed gradually, the rules also took this affect.
The changing of the commandments corrupts everything in animal farm because it allows the pigs to do and get away with anything they wont. Some of the rules they break include the contact with humans, the use of human possessions, the growing of beer and most importantly the killing of another animal which happens on more than one occasion and the pigs didn’t show one bit of remorse or concern for the others. This tells me that the pigs never wanted the great equal land they promised at the start, all they were looking out for was numero uno. But worst of all they got caught and then changed the rules to make sure that the other animals would still trust them. For example “Every one is equal, but some are more equal than others” which is probably the worst change of the rules because it simply says “I can decide who is better than the others just because I am smarter that you.” It’s not only bad to lie to your brethren but to make them your slaves when you promised them freedom is just savage.
The idea of freedom becomes corrupted into slavery when the farm gets over thrown by the pigs, because the animals have no power and the pigs have worked them down to worse off then when Jones was the owner. They had done this so well that even the other farmers congratulated the pigs on it. As Mr Pilkington says” I believe that the lower animals on Animal farm did more work and received less food than any animals in the country” Telling us that the pigs have become so corrupt that they are now worse than the humans. At the beginning old major talks about the vast plains of freedom, abundant supply of food and little labour that they will have to do but this soon turns to darkness because of the pigs greed and lust to be as powerful as they can. But the greatest insult of all, that completely destroyed the dreams and ideals of the animals, was changing the name of animal farm back to the title Manor farm, which was thought to be in the time everyone wanted to forget, the very enemy and purpose of the rebellion.
Overall we now know that the ideals and dreams of the old animal farm have been mutated and sickly twisted into a greedy one sided factory. This is because of equality changing into dictatorship, the commandments changing from pleasant to obscene and the idea of freedom becoming slavery. We can only hope that the real people in Russia in which this book was based, who have already over come this communism can get their lives back to what it was for only a short while, right after the rebellion.
2 comments:
Carlos, I think your introduction makes your three points clearly, though I wonder if you are introducing too many ideas by looking at racism and the importance of dreams...
I think your first paragraph makes a good point about the fact that the changes are gradual and bgin with relatively small things. I do think that using the change in the commandment is maybe not the best wayy of showing the dictatorship, though I do like the way you have described how the pigs would be seeing it.
In your third paragraph you are making some good points - the one about lying and changing things to suit the pigs own needs is interesting. I do think though that you could be much clearer in your paragraph about the commandments, how they stand for ideals and how these ideals are corruppted by the change. You may just need to re-organise the way it is written.
I think you are also need to think about what you are trying to say - for example, for your third paragraph I think it makes more sense to have a topic sentence which says something like "The idea of freedom is corruppted to become slavery..." - in other words, I think you need to be looking at the fact that ideals are twisted and changed to become their opposite. Your third paragraph also needs some more specific examples - a few quotes would help and would also give the paragraph more focus.
Your conclusion sums things up clearly - which shows me you really do understand the point you are trying to make. I'm not sure about the last sentence - it does feel like a bit of a moral judgement.
Finally, you may need to avoid some of the more informal language you use in the essay.
Carlos, It may ahve been useful to leave the original so i could see the changes...but this does feel a little tighter.
I think you are still making a confusion between the changes happening being the corruption and it being the fact that ideals are corrupted which causes the change - if you see what I mean?
I think this could be solved by looking more specifically at what those ideals were in the beginning then going on to show how they are corrupted. You deal with the corruption and change well but don't really show us what that dream was to begin with. This could be solved by having each paragraph begin with what the ideal was in the beginning - in other words using either parts of Old Major's speech, Beasts of England or the Commandments themselves. This is what I was talking about the other day when I was saying that two part questions need both parts answered.
I think also in paragraph one you may need to show the end point - you use the link and apples example well to show that the corruption began early on but you don't give us evidence of how bad things get at the end.
I think perhaps it would be useful to use the paragraph about the commandments as your first body paragraph - because everything else flows from that - here is the codification of the ideals and how they are twisted to suit the needs of the increasingly corrupt pigs.
I think your third body paragraph works well because we have the example from Old Major's speech and also the one from Pilkington which shows us how bad things have really got. Your point about the name change is an excellent one!
I think your conclusion makes good sense and deals with the issues well.
So generally on the right track. I'll be checking back on the blog a few times before the exam if you have any questions...
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