The Cause of Dystopia in Animal Farm

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the humanistic characteristics in the animals led them from forming a utopia, to a dystopia. In the beginning of the novel, Old Major leads the animals in the song Beasts of England, encouraging a rebellion against Mr. Jones. After the revolution, the animals began to work towards their utopia, but they began to turn into what they despised, and their utopia began to fall apart. This book shows how human corruption completely destroys a government that is set up to serve the people. Orwell achieves this by giving each of the characters a different human quality. In Animal Farm the pigs symbolize politicians and the upper class. They lie, cheat and steal from the animals that they are supposed to serve; and they make promises that they know they can never keep. Napoleon and Squealer are the two main pigs who take over after Snowball is chased off of the farm. Squealer would constantly justify the horrible actions of Napoleon as for the betterment of the animals. Once after Napoleon took all the apples and milk for the pigs, Squealer says: â€Å"Comrades! † he cried. â€Å"You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. 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. The whole management and organization 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. † The selfishness and greed of the pigs not only makes them into what they hated the most, but it also caused to animals to lose their trust in them and to dislike them. Another group of animals in Animal Farm that show human qualities is Boxer and sheep. Boxer is a large and powerful horse to buys into animalism and works the hardest on the farm. He agreed with everything that Napoleon said, and his catchphrases were: â€Å"I will work harder† and â€Å"Napoleon is always right. † Boxer also saves the farm on multiple occasions, but in the end, Napoleon sold him to a glue factory to be killed. Boxer represents the working class, which is used by the government to its advantage, and then never cared for again. Boxer’s complete trust in the government led to his own misfortune. The sheep were totally gullible animals. The believed whatever they were told and repeated it. Boxer and the sheep represent individuals who whole-heartedly follow the government, no matter what. This quality leads to a dystopia because when the followed exactly what Napoleon described, they failed to realize that the government was no longer working for them as intended, but they for the government. Also in Animal Farm, Clover and Benjamin were two animals who were not as trusting of the government, but went along with it anyway. Clover also represents the working class, but she also had her own doubts about how Animalism was being run. Her deepest concerns are expressed after Napoleon’s executions: â€Å"As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she could have spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow of the human race. These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion. Benjamin on the other hand, was entirely cynical of Animalism, because he knew that it would not work out. He was aware of the fact that life on the farm would go on just as it had, no matter who controlled the farm. These two animals represent two different ideas displayed by those who are under the jurisdiction of the government. Having two separate ideas can lead to dissention in the people, causing a dystopia. Finally in the end of the novel, it is seen that pigs taught themselves how to walk about on two feet, which is completely contradictory to their original ideology â€Å"Four legs good, two legs bad. In the last chapter of the book, it is said when the pigs had humans in the farmhouse for a meal, that â€Å"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. † The animals originally believed that it was the humans that caused them their dystopia, but in the end, it was the humanistic characters in the both the animals themselves and the humans as well that caused a dystopia.