Role Of Ignorance In George Orwell's Animal Farm

Being ignorant can lead to oppression because smart people can use the ignorance against others. Animal Farm by George Orwell teaches a lesson in which animals that are kept from knowledge by the pigs. Since the animals were unable to understand most written materials, they believe that the pigs would help lead them to achieve an improved life. Animal Farm is an allegory of the Russian Revolution and of North Korea. In the Russian Revolution, the oppressed were the working class. While in today’s North Korea, its citizens are “brainwashed” to believe that the government of North Korea is trying to help people. Orwell’s novel shows how control of information can create ignorance that leads to oppression; the allegorical meanings of the novel show that

In Animal Farm, the animals’ ignorance allows them to be oppress by the pigs. The animals blindly followed the pigs’ rule, which was the type of rule they wanted to escape from in the first place. After taking control, eventually, the pigs move into the barnhouse. The animals “have seemed to remember that a resolution against this has been passed in early days, and again Squealer was able to convince them that this was not the case” (Orwell 41). To live in the farmhouse was against the rule before Napoleon takes over. Squealer, who is the convincing pig, manages to convince them that they were able to live in the farmhouse because it was never against the rules before. The animals believe Squealer because he was one of the pigs with superior knowledge. Later in Animal Farm, Clover could not read the Fourth Commandment and fetched Muriel, who couldn’t read well: “ ‘It says, no animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets’, she announced finally. Curiously enough, Clover had not remembered that the Fourth Commandment mentioned sheets; but as it was there on the wall, it must have done