Jeremiah Hankins

                                                                                   Mr. Post, per.4

                                                                                   March 17, 2002

Animal Farm

 

Humans are born with the instinctive need for power, the need to influence and exercise authority over something.  Unlike most other animals, humans use their skills and abilities to change the world around them to better meet their needs. Toward this end, people always seek greater control.  George Orwell’s examination of power and its controlling nature is brilliantly expressed in Animal Farm.   Through allegory, Orwell shows how power corrupted the Bolshevik Revolution and the communist dream.  The morals of his tale are universal themes, they transcend time. Power is addictive and can readily corrupt if left unchecked.

 

 

Even normal hard-working people are easily jaded by supremacy.  In Animal Farm, the pigs started out as energetic, exited, devoted leaders.  Overtime, their attitudes changed.  They started to look on other animals as inferior and used them to get more for themselves. The pigs could not resist the lure of power once they possessed it.  This situation parallels real life.  Most people seek more and more possessions.  But those in power use their authority to get more assets often at the expense of others. Let’s look at a recent example.  The executives of Enron did not start their corporation with the intent to create a criminal business.  They legitimately earned money.  But their power was unchecked and they were greedy.  They became corrupt.  Their morals could not restrain their desire for more money, and others were sacrificed in the process.

 

 

While the original executives of Enron may have started with their hearts in the right place, there are other people whose quests for power are much more cynical.  These people seize power for their own ends.  Orwell showed this characteristic of humans through Napoleon.  After Jones was forced from the farm, Napoleon and the other pigs took control.   It wasn’t long before they abused their power in the same way Jones had. This need to control is in our human nature.  Our need for dominance over things around us is the very reason we humans are so advanced.  People change their environment to better suit their needs.  Unfortunately, some people take this to the extreme.  Adolph Hitler, for example, wanted complete world dominance, and for a time he ruled most of Europe and Northern Africa.  He used sterilization and the killing of innocent people to impose his idea of racial purity.

 

 

How can we prevent people like Hitler or executives from Enron from abusing their position?  We must diffuse their power.  A system of checks and balances is needed.  Governments, businesses, or any other domineering group need a system that can limit the power of the individual leaders.  Our founding fathers saw such a need.  The power of the leaders in the United States is curbed by our Constitution using a system of checks and balances.  Only by such a dispersion of power will the common man be safe from those who misuse their command.