Leadership and Corruption

Question 1

Introduction

Answer 1

1. Orwell conveys how intellectual inferiority, a lack of questioning and susceptibility to manipulation renders individuals vulnerable, which can then be exploited by corrupt leadership.
2. Allowing absolute, unchecked and unrestrained power through a lack of checks and balances can lead to tyrannical leadership.
3. Animal Farm is a novel about the dangers of power and its potential to corrupt, even with the noblest of aspirations. [Animal Farm seeks to parody the betrayal of Socialist ideals by the Soviet Union].

Question 2

PG 1

Answer 2

-Orwell highlights the potential of absolute power to corrupt absolutely.
-Orwell uses satire in order to criticise Russian Communism, and more specifically Stalinism
and its totalitarian nature.
-Small privileges quickly bloom into a full-scale corruption, and the pigs begin more and more to resemble those whom they claim to replace.

Question 3

PG 1 Quotes

Answer 3

1. The corruption of the pigs’ leadership is shown through their attempt to control and dictate the running of the farm: Chapter 3: “The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples.”
2. In Chapter 3, Napoleon takes Jessie and Bluebell’s “puppies” and makes “himself responsible for their education” in order to function as a mechanism for oppression through developing them into vicious guard dogs: the dogs that Napoleon had “reared privately” had
   become “as fierce-looking as wolves” and “wagged their tails to him” (Chapter 5)
3. The pigs provide the animals with the illusion of choice when in reality, they have very
   little: Chapter 6: “This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.”
4. The pigs begin to rule the farm with absolute tyranny and control, eroding the animals’ capacity to oppose them: “Instead - she did not know why - they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.”
5. The leadership displayed by the pig becomes increasingly tyrannical as they enact executions in order to sustain and reinforce their own power on the farm. Chapter 8: “pile of corpses lying before Napoleon’s feet”.
6. Boxer’s death symbolises the readiness of the pigs to exploit the animals for their own purposes, and then to discard then when they no longer serve useful: “taking you to your death”
7. It is clear that by the end of the novella, the pigs have themselves morphed into the dictators they sought to displace: Chapter 10: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

Question 4

PG 2

Answer 4

Orwell highlights that the existing inadequacies in a political system and those the system seeks to control (for example, through a lack of questioning and a lack of
accountability) allow for corrupt leadership to exist.

The system of communism is premised on utopian ideals but in reality, emerges as failed practices.

The lack of robust accountability catalyses the descent and regression towards the system that the initial revolution sought to displace as people naturally gravitate towards corruption.

Question 5

PG 2 Quotes

Answer 5

1. The animals and their lack of questioning facilitates their exploitation. Old Major’s speech alerts them to a potential life of “comfort and dignity” (Chapter 1) however despite this not materialising, they fail to oppose the tyrannical dictators that control them. The animals, through their lack of argument are also complicit in their own control and
   exploitation: Chapter 2: “So it was agreed without further argument that the milk and the windfall apples (and also the main crop of apples when they ripened) should be reserved for the pigs alone.” The animals recognise the slaughter of the animals in Chapter 8 amounting to “cruel
   retribution”. They recognise that in “the old days”, some “bloodshed” was present “but it seemed to all of them that it was far worse now that it was happening among themselves. Since Jones had left the farm, until today, no animal had killed another animal.” Boxer, despite his superior strength seeks to blame the animals for these events. “I do not understand it. I would not have believed that such things could happen on our farm. It must
   be due to some fault in ourselves. The solution, as I see it, is to work harder.”
2. The ease with which the pigs adapt the fundamental principle of animalism, without questioning or challenge from the other animals, serves to indicate a system where any change, irrespective of its repercussions, can be made. -> Chapter 10 “All animals are equal
   but some animals are more equal than others.”

Question 6

PG 3

Answer 6

Corrupt leadership, demonstrated through dishonest or fraudulent behaviour, serves to manipulate and control those who are weaker through the use of lies, deception and propaganda. Orwell believed that ‘political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable’.

Question 7

PG 3 Quotes

Answer 7

1. The pigs use of propaganda serves to reinforce their own position and benefits on the farm: “Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers.”
2. The pigs convince the animals of their necessity on the farm, justifying their actions as significant for the wellbeing of all the animals. Chapter 5: “Do not imagine comrades, that leadership is a pleasure! On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility… No one believes firmly than comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourself. But, sometimes you might make the wrong decision comrades, and there where should we be”.
3. Chapter 9: The pigs’, through Squealer, seeks to conceal the truth behind Boxer’s fate in a way that departs from the real outcome. “Squealer went on to give further graphic details of Boxer’s death-bed, the admirable care he had received, and the expensive medicines for which Napoleon had paid…their last doubts disappeared.”

Question 8

Conclusion

Answer 8

• Animal Farm satirises politicians, specifically their rhetoric, ability to manipulate others, and insatiable lust for power.
• Orwell highlights that even those who espouse the most virtuous ideas to become the worst enemies of the people whose lives they are claiming to improve.
• Power can have the persuasive action in undoing the moral ethics of one’s character.