What is so sad about what happens on the Manor Farm (for when was it ever really "animal" farm?), is that the needless destruction and death, all the years of suffering, could have been prevented by the same "animals" who became its victims. The rise of the tyrannical could have been avoided, or, at best, snuffed out by that same determination and bravery present in the animals at the first battle.
Did we, as readers, ever witness Napoleon fully endorsing Major's rules?
Animal Farm becomes Manor Farm, a prison before and a prison after. For what prisoner is free to pursue what makes one human?
There's "death" before death.
There's nothing to be admired in the Big House or in the field where the animals toil without benefit of the fruits of their labor. In the CEO board rooms or at the workplace, order is chaos. Boxer's, "I will work harder," as a response to the theft of civil liberties and justice, is not only inadequate but absurd. The sheep and their "Four legs good, two legs bad," changed for efficacy into "Four legs good, two legs better !," is homage to tyranny. And that's absurd and shouldn't be matched by those who want to see a better world without the systemic orders that are antithetical to democracy.
And that's what's lost here. The demoralization of the spirit has replaced the legacy of rebellion. Life is extinguished. It's not the "leadership" in the Big House but the victims of this ruthless order that disturbs Orwell and should disturb any reader who comes to the text with a sense of social responsibility to life on this planet.
What good could have ever come of this so-called revolution on Manor Farm when the vision of their collective spirit, in tangent with Major's willingness to organize the collectives' thoughts, was forgotten by those who desired freedom from tyranny? When the end arrives, in all caps, it can be heard as an echo of lost opportunities. (And those opportunities were lost at the beginning, when the "revolution" ended, mind you).
With successive generations on Manor Farm, the rule that "no animal must ever tyrannise over his own kind," is no longer part of the worker's collective memory because no longer an inheritance. "A time came when there was no one who remembered the old days before the Rebellion, except Clover, Benjamin, Moses the raven, and a number of pigs." And then time passed, and that generation died. Boxer's death makes for the survivors a "more morose and taciturn" environment.
And Boxer and others missed it: "It was a pig walking on his hind legs."
Napoleon, too, along with the whole pig rule, walking "majestically upright" with throwing "haunting" glances this way and that way! He carries a whip! Napoleon carries a whip!
Progress!!
The winning progress just keeps coming: Those 7 Commandments, originally modeled after Major's rules are whittled down to one, supreme edict since it arrives in all caps:
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.
I leave Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Constantine, Hitler, Pinochet, even Trump to the historians"
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
