Question

One major theme found in George Orwell's Animal Farm is the idea of education. Identify and discuss at least two specific examples from the text that illustrate this theme. Based on your examples, do you think Orwell believes education is important or not? Explain your answer.

Answer 1

Answer and Explanation:

For Orwell, education was the main factor in preventing tyrannical and fascist leaders from coming to power. This is because education would give people information and critical thinking. These two factors would prevent the population from being exploited and reduced, as they would perceive facist behaviors and be able to reflect on the negative results that the population would resolve. In this way, the well-educated population would be able to establish factors to overthrow these leaders of power and prevent them from exploiting any individual.

However, we know that the nations most exploited by factional and authoritarian leaders are those that do not provide, or provide poor quality education, leaving the population to the mercy of those who say they are more intelligent and more capable, who are, in their majority, tyrannical.

Two examples of this in "Animal farm" can be seen, when pigs pose themselves as the super animals because of their intelligence, knowledge and quick thinking. While horses, which do not have this development, are exploited, humiliated and devalued by pigs, but believe that as pigs have more knowledge, pigs are correct.