Napoleon's Hunger for Power in the Novel Animal Farm by George Orwell

Old Major, a prize-winning boar gathers the animals of the Manor Farm for a meeting. He tells them his dream of a perfect society which all animals live together and no humans to oppress them, he explains to them how they have to work for a society, and how it doesn’t just happen without hard work. Three nights after that meeting Old Major dies and the three younger pigs Snowball, Squealer and Napoleon try to implement his main ideas and called it Animalism.

Only a few nights later the animals successfully overthrow the human oppressor Mr.Jones and start fulfilling Old Major’s dream. Snowball takes on the role of teaching the animals to read and Napoleon forcefully takes new born puppies to educate them of the main principles of Animalisms.

Which shows the start of a communism. After re—arming Mr.Jones tries to take back his farm, unfortunately the animals defeat him once again, this battle was called the Battle of the Cowshed and they take Mr.

Jones gun as trophyt After this event Snowball and Napoleon begin to fight with each other for power and influence among the other animals since they know Mr.Jones is done. Snowball then comes up with a great idea, to build an electric windmill, he proposes this idea at a meeting with the animals and Napoleon denied it and called for nine attack dogs to kick Snowball from the farm. From this point Napoleon can be seen as the dictator as he takes leadership of Animal Farm and says there will no longer be any meetings.

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He declares the pigs will decide the good of every animal.

“The pigs did not actually work, but directed and supervised the others. With their superior knowledge it was natural that they should assume the leadership.” This can be related to communism during Stalin’s time period in Russia where each person works and gets paid according their abilities and needs. Napoleon rethinks the windmill idea and then realizes it’s a good idea so he puts the animals to work and they complete the windmill, but one day a storm knocked over the windmill and he was being told that the windmill walls were maid too tin, Napoleon disagrees and says it was Snowball, he has come to sabotage the windmill. Napoleons struggle for maintaining power rises and he says anyone who opposes his leadership will meet instant death by the attack dogs. He then continues by rewriting history and saying that Snowball is a villain and never contributed anything good to society.

From here on Napoleon starts acting like a human, drinking whisky talking with another farmer etc., the Animalist rules disallow actions like these, but Napoleon has made Squealer into a propagandist, convincing other animals that Napoleon is a great leader and is doing everything he can to better the conditions for the animals. A farmer named Mr. Frederick betrays Napoleon in a deal then attacks the farm and destroys the windmill with dynamite. Another battle begins and this battle ends up with Boxer getting beaten, and receiving many wounds. Later they start rebuilding the windmill, Boxer falls and nearly dies, he is then nowhere to be found, Squealer comes out with a statement saying Boxer has died in peace serving Napoleon to his last breath. This was all planned by Napoleon since he actually sold Boxer, his most loyal, hardest worker to a glue maker to get money for his whisky addiction.

Time passes on and the pigs become like humans, walking upright, wearing cloths, sleeping in beds and the Animalist principles gets removed and gets replaced by a reading “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. Napoleon also changes the name of Animal Farm back to the Manor Farm as he thinks that’s the right title. Thus by examining this information it can be seen that Napoleon seeks to gain power over the other pigs that were originally supposed to rule Animal Farm with him. He came up with elaborate lies to his people such as that he is doing his best to get the animals all good living/working conditions. Napoleon is egotistical as he sold his most loyal animal Boxer to get whisky for himself. Torturing all the animals with the work he makes them. He then frees himself of this power as he eases down on the amount of rules he enforces. Which can be related to the fall of Soviet Russia.