“Shooting an Elephant,” a short story by George Orwell, is about a man who goes against his morals and succumbs to social pressures at the expense of an innocent elephant. The story, published in 1936, was influenced by the formal innovations and...

Though at times confusing, using a contradiction strongly establishes and emphasizes a point and often inspires an emotional response. In George Orwell’s essay, “Shooting an Elephant,” Orwell effectively delivers these contradictions, or...

Both George Orwell and Chimamanda Adichie have lived in and experienced colonization or a post-colonial environment first hand. Orwell served with the Imperialist police in Burma in the 1920s, before leaving this post due to an immense sense of...

Whilst Snowball is used to convey an image of just leadership in Animal Farm, Orwell demonstrates how this leadership alone is inadequate. Orwell presents his views on leadership and governance through the characterisation of Snowball as the ideal...

The social contract is the view that a person's morals or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form a society in which they live. The best three known philosophers of social contract theory: Thomas Hobbes,...

George Orwell's political fable Animal Farm portrays a reenactment of the Russian Revolution, with major characters cast as farm animals and communism renamed "Animalism." True to the historical story, the aristocratic players manipulate the...

Within George Orwell’s simple allegory Animal Farm lie lessons about the complex bonds between leadership, fraternity, and self-agency. The animals are at first subjugated by humans in a communal voiceless suffering, but Old Major inspires them...

In the allegorical novel Animal Farm, George Orwell uses animals to represent humans or groups in Stalin's Russian Revolution. A character who is integral to the development of the storyline is Benjamin, an aged donkey. It is unclear which group...

Sylvia Plath, a confessional poet, once said, “I talk to God but the sky is empty,” (Plath 199). When one talks to God, they know He is there, but they do not see Him. They ask for help and expect it right away, which leads to conflict. Plath is...

George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ is an allegorical fairy tale which is profound in its condemnations of totalitarian regimes. The novel explores the concepts of propaganda, totalitarianism and tyranny impacting on the oppressed society with the use...

The social hierarchy and class differences of The Animal Farm caused its demise. The most prominent social groups settled into their own habitats, establishing their own “grounds.” The animals on the bottom of the hierarchy are not well educated,...

Animal Farm is an allegorical novel written by George Orwell based upon the historical events of the 1917 Russian Revolution. The short tale revolves around an overworked group of farm animals that rebel against their owners in an attempt to...

“All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” is echoed throughout the texts ‘Animal Farm’ (George Orwell, 1945) and Divergent (Neil Burger, 2014). Both texts demonstrate that the struggle for power is deep rooted in...

The first president of the United States, George Washington, famously stated, “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter” (Washington). Often an uneducated working class is exploited for...

From Hitler to Hussein, the rise and fall of dictators has captivated historians and writers alike for centuries. British novelist George Orwell (1903-1950) was no exception. In his 1946 allegory Animal Farm, Orwell satirized the 1917 Russian...

The evolutionary aspect of the human race which sets it apart, in knowledge and complexity, from the rest of the animal kingdom, is its ability to express ideas through language. Arguably, our ability to manipulate language in order to negotiate,...

Animal Farm, a book by George Orwell, begins with a leader, an old, wise boar that delivers a speech after their tyrant owner, Mr. Jones, goes to sleep. He speaks about how the animals are oppressed at the farm, and allows them to see how badly...

In George Orwell’s renowned novel, 1984, the protagonist, Winston Smith continues to preserve his normal, day to day tendencies while secretly questioning the rigid policies of Oceania’s ominously dark society privately within his mind. Although...

"On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it...

Following the political upheaval and struggle for power after the second world war, George Orwell's novel 1984 cautions against the dangers of oppression and exemplifies the consequential nightmarish world of the near future. The plot traces the...

The opening of Book Two of 1984, in which Winston meets Julia and begins the erotic affair he has so deeply desired, commences the main section of the novel and strikes an immediate contrast between the two lovers. Unlike Winston, Julia is neither...

In George Orwell's 1984, the differences and relationships between the proles, the Outer Party, and the Inner Party reflect different aspects of human nature and the various levels of the human psyche. The most base, savage level of humanity is...

"When Thomas More wrote Utopia in 1515, he started a literary genre with lasting appeal for writers who wanted not only to satirize existing evils but to postulate the state, a kind of Golden Age in the face of reality" (Hewitt 127). Unlike a...

The title year of George Orwell's most famous novel is nineteen years past, but the dystopian vision it draws has retained its ability to grip readers with a haunting sense of foreboding about the future. At the heart of many of the issues touched...