Animal Farm Essay on Old Major's Speech

Animal Farm Essay on Old Major's Speech

  • Submitted By: nebster94
  • Date Submitted: 12/04/2008 12:40 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1934
  • Page: 8
  • Views: 2

Animal Farm
Essay on Old Major’s Speech

The novel Animal Farm by George Orwell begins with Old Major’s famous speech, which incites the other animals to form a rebellion; similar to the events leading up to the Stalin era and the rise of Bolshevism. The actual story is the most famous satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism.

To begin the story, George Orwell narrates how ‘Old Major, the prize Middle White Boar, had had a strange dream on the previous night and wished to communicate it to the other animals.’ Major’s speech was a mixture of Marxism and Lennism, both famous Russion Revolutioneries who, like Old Major, fueled the Communist revolution.

Old Major’s speech set a new beginning for the animals, which stimulates the revolution throughout the rest of the book.
Old Major ‘was twelve years old and had lately grown rather stout, but he was still a majestic-looking pig, with a wise and benevolent appearance in spite of the fact that his tushes had never been cut’. It is clear that he is a powerful figure, but at the same time wise and full of ideas. He starts his speech saying ‘Comrades, you have heard already about the strange dream that I had last night’. By saying comrades it draws him and the animals closer together as if to emphasize his main point; ‘all animals are equal’. The fact that the other animals have heard about Old Major’s dream creates a bond between the animals, to show how they console one another.
In his speech Old Major is full of ideas as he states-‘I feel it my duty to pass on to you such wisdom as I have acquired’. The main goal of the speech was to show the animals how ‘Man is the only real enemy’ they have. ‘Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.’ This ties in with the pigs as they, like man, later rule over the animals. This may be due to...

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