Analysis of Common Themes in Animal Farm and Lord of The Flies

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” is a quote from John Dalberg-Acton, an otherwise unremarkable politician. This quote has been proven to be all-encompassing in both literature and in history. Throughout the tens of thousands of the years of human history, this quote has been proven again and again, in the words of George Santayana, and later Winston Churchill “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat”. While the two authors behind Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies, George Orwell and William Golding, both had their separate intentions in the book, both stand as important allegories and cautionary tales to many pre-eminent human themes. While both of these tales employ a microcosm, with Animal Farm being, obviously, animals, and Lord of the Flies being with English children, they both contain the themes of tyranny, power, corruption, propaganda, dictatorship, violence and censorship. While both of these address a specific point of human history, the early 20th century, both of these allegories can be seen as a microcosmic for any revolution and subsequent power vacuum. Both of these fables possess the ability to transcend the time in which they were written and to serve as powerful tools to warn of the past, present, future and inherent evils possessed in humanity. These two texts are synecdoche of humanity, and the inherent flaws in humankind. These tales remain applicable due to their ubiquitous nature, to quote writer Don Watson “read Animal Farm and be in no doubt – you are in it, if only as a sheep”.

Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies were written in 1944 and 1953 respectively, in his essay, Fable, William Golding, references Animal Farm multiple times, and it served partly as inspiration for Lord of the Flies. While both of these authors had different intentions in writing their respective texts, Golding being a capitalist, and Orwell being a socialist. However, both of these texts get to the core of humanity, and, to what the purpose is for literature. Literature serves as an exploration of human themes, in essence, as a study to where humanity stands. Both of these texts inform us about the tendencies of humanity. These two texts are both valuable because of the underlying themes and morals. They both makes the reader acutely aware of the failings and intrinsic struggles in humanities ability to govern themselves. In the time preceding the writing of the texts, the Second World War, humanity fell into a deep recess of moral values, and resulted in the murder of 70-85 million people . For both these authors, the early 20th century, which they were witness to, changes their world view significantly. Orwell was born in the far flung-corner of colonialism in Burma, and as such developed a dislike of colonialism and nationalism, and this is seen in his critical writings. Orwell moved to England, and ended up fighting in the Spanish Civil War in an attempt to fight fascism. Similarily to how Orwell developed his dislike of fascism, Golding had a hatred of war and senseless violence. In 1940, in the beginning of the second world war, Golding joined the Royal Navy, and fought on destroyers against the Nazis. Both of these writer’s own experience found there way into their text, either by osmosis from their inner self, or through design. Golding delved into the inner inclinations of humanity to violence, and used his experience as a teacher and a navy man as the link for him from the real world and his writings. Orwell wrote to express the issues with the USSR and how the ‘communism’ had turned into fascism, again through either intention or accident, both have the ability to transcend the time they were written to. I personally believe that it was a combination of both design and happy accident that these novels are so valuable apropos to the 21st century. Because both of these novels get to the core of humanity, it is natural for them to summarise and expose the flaws in all of humanity. An additional similarity between these two texts is the ending that is presented. In Lord of the Flies, the end has the school children standing on the beach, weeping, after their society has collapsed, resulting in two deaths, and they have been potentially rescued or potentially they are only going into another type of danger. In Animal Farm the novel ends with the pigs dining with the humans, and the evocative lines, “the creatures looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which is which”. This is because at their respective core basis, both of these novels are about a promising young society becoming decrepit, with all their ideals becoming tools by which society is opressed.

In both our world today and in the past we see many examples of where events have transpired similarly to Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies or both. There are a multitude of times where ever small events or huge historical movements have been reminiscent of these two texts. A concurrent, real world example of Animal Farm could be North Korea. After the Second World war, Japan had to return Korea after nearly 40 years of tyranny over the Korean people. The Korean peninsula was split in half, with the communist USSR (who Orwell was writing about in Animal Farm) taking interim control of the northern half and the United States taking interim control of the southern half. The USSR quickly took to turning what had become North Korea into a communist country. The USSR imposed Kim Il-sung as the leader of the country, Kim Il-Sung was claimed to be a famous, very powerful, Korean resistance leader, however, this is doubted by historians who think he was at best a minor figure in the Korean resistance. So here we have the already corrupt country of the USSR planting a poisoned seed of a government in a ‘brand new’ country. In this North Korean example, we can see the direct path from the Russian Revolution that Orwell wrote of into this macrocosm of what happens when a supposedly communist government is imposed. In North Korea, there are many similarities between the two texts and real life. Even though the reason for it being different, in both Animal farm and Lord of the Flies there is a new society being established. There is a similar theme in the USSR (obviously), China after their civil war and North Korea. All three of these countries followed similar paths, which was the one that Orwell predicted when he wrote Animal Farm. Now while China seems to have some staying power, it appears that North Korea is on the USSR, and therefore Animal Farm, path. The Soviet Union is now defunct, and it went through years of economic turmoil before collapsing in 1994. Similarly, North Korea has a struggling economy with its GDP per capita being only $1,700, which would place it 179th in the world in that metric, and with unemployment being at 25.4%. Additionally, “40% of the population of North Korea is malnourished and 1 in 5 children are stunted due to chronic malnutrition” . In the words of George Orwell “they were always cold, and usually hungry” even in a ‘communist’ society like North Korea or Animal Farm, there are still the lavishly living leaders, and everyone else. While Kim Jong-Un us an 130kg smoker who lives on a private resort which has been described by visitors as “North Korea’s Ibiza”. Not to be too on the nose with the comparisons but, at the conclusion of Orwell’s book, Napoleon is described as being “a mature boar of 24 stone (152KG)” and Squealer was “so fat that he could with difficulty see out of his eyes”. To summarise the North Korean experience, we are seeing a country that was born of the abominable seed of the USSR. North Korea has drifted away from their traditional communist views and into the authoritarian dictatorship they live in. If North Korea is Manor Farm, then we are Foxwood farm, looking from the outside and relying only on second-hand news of how North Korea fares. It is evident that North Korea now is in deep economic decline, with a large group of bourgeoisie sitting atop a throne on limitless wealth created on the back of the rank and file of the self-ordained Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

However, it is not only the obscure, outright dictatorship that is guilty of having their ideals dilapidated by greed and people looking only for their own personal game. The USSR had an absolute ideal which they sort to stick by “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. Western, capitalist, countries had also have a set of strict ideals. For example, the United States Of America was founded of the 4th of July 1776, with the intention of creating a freer society. In fact, freedom was what originally drove the pilgrims to cross the sea and settle in the New World, to flee religious persecution. The infant United States also double down on this message of freedom, when in 1791, they passed the Bill of Rights, the ten amendments to the constitution which gave all citizens certain universal rights. The “land of the free and the home of the brave” was originally very determined to maintain these absolute rights. Many to this day, still refuse to even accept an argument against the 2nd amendment, the right to bear arms. While these rights are considered by many, they are still consistently broken. Amendment 4 is of particular interest “protection from unreasonable searches and siezures”, due to recent events. The treatment of immigrants from south of the border has shown the United States lack of value towards that particular one. The ICE (Immigration and customs enforcement) has on at least one occasion planned to target “up to 2,000 families” in one day. It seems particulary interesting when you consider the US’ unflincing dedication to the second amendment. Freedom, it seems, depends on what side you are standing on. Indeed, the synechdoce of the United States, the Statue of Liberty, has it’s pedestal bearing the inscription “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door”. In light of recent events, it is not difficult to think of a less apt inscription. The United States was also originally a very isolationist country, when in 1823, President Monroe and John Quincy Adams announced the ‘Monroe Doctrine’ which announced that the US and only the US has dominion over events in the western hemisphere. While this is slightly interventionist, it was necessary for the US to maintain order in South and Central America. However, in the early to mid 20th century, the US transitioned into the world’s preeminent power. The wars in the Middle East serve as particular reminders to this, where the US has essentially been at war in the Middle East since 1976 . The war in the Middle East is an preeiment example of all the flaws in the US foreign policy. The US went to war in Iraq due to the repeated line “weapons of mass destruction”, which began with the Washington Post, and was repeated, among others, by the former Vice President Dick Cheney. The other main factor for the invasion was the supposed relationship between dictator Suddem Hussein and terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda. More malicious however, then pure terrible leadership, is Cheney’s, who ended his career with 30% approval, relationship with the company Halliburton. Halliburton is an international conglomerate that specialises in, among other things, oil and weapons. Cheney was the Chief Executive of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, when he left to run for office as Vice President. Even more troubling is the fact that that Halliburton from when Cheney took office they went from the 22nd largest military contractor to the 7th. If that wasn’t enough, Cheney “received $2 million in bonuses and deferred compensation from his former company since taking office in 2001”. The Bush administration even gave Halliburton a $7 Billion contract to restore the oil wells in Iraq, and the contract didn’t even have bidding due to that “it would have been impractical to have an open bidding on the oil wells”. All of this is reminiscient of both The Lord of The Flies and Animal Farm. With acknowledgment to these common features in these two texts’, it can be rationally deducted that these texts not only apply to revolutions but the all of humanity. The United States began in 1776 as a blank canvas, like Manor Farm and the island from The Lord of The Flies. But, gradually or otherwise, moral decrecipity found it’s way into the United States, as it did in the Soviet Union, and North Korea, and essentially every society ever known to man. This ineveitible inclination of humanity to go against their original moral values is one of the greatest intrinsic values of literature.

In conclusion, both Animal Farm and The Lord of the Flies address very similar themes in humanity, and both are transcendent of the time they are written in. These texts both get to the key themes of humanity and government, and that is what gives them such ubiqituos success in the last over seventy years. These two texts are very successful in outlining what happens to new societies after they have been created, they both have the ability to criticise what was contempary for them, and still be relevant to today. Where they differ, is that while Animal Farm is a hyper-focused critique, while The Lord of the Flies is evalulates the psyche of people, and uses the tool of imagined English school children to show this. Likewise, Orwell’s novel uses the tool of the allegory to make his point across about the USSR. My obversations due to studying these texts is that there is reason behind why these two texts are considered so timeless, and these two texts are really inherent to what the point of literature is. Literature allows us as regular human beings to understand we, as a society and individuals are the way we are, and why our governments end up the way they are, flaws and all.