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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
George Orwell’s writing style in Animal Farm is simple, straightforward, and intense. It’s a writing voice that supports the novel's many analogies and allegories. Orwell’s terse, almost journalistic writing contains very few adjectives, allowing the audience to make emotional judgments for themselves. His choice of clear, simple language reinforces the many political messages embedded in the story. Indeed, although the book does contain literal slogans and propaganda, some of the descriptive and figurative writing also sounds like spoken rhetoric or slogans. The book’s syntax, which is often repetitive, also mirrors the propaganda Squealer and the pigs disseminate within the farm to control the other animals. As the story progresses and the pigs gradually alter the Seven Commandments for their own benefit, slight variations in these repetitive structures reflect the changes in the way the pigs want the farm to run.
Animal Farm’s diction also scaffolds the social hierarchy the animals live in. The pigs, who assume leadership roles, use genteel, sophisticated language. Their syntax is the most aristocratic and educated of any of the animals, and it becomes more so as the book continues. Orwell’s writing often comments on the relationship between the English language and class struggle. The reader can see this working if they compare the pigs' more erudite speech to the other animals' simple diction.
The novel’s sparse figurative language also intensifies the development of its central political allegory. The imagery Orwell employs swings between beautiful, bucolic English countryside and the bloody realities of totalitarianism. The novel begins with more of the first and ends with far more of the second. This runs parallel with Orwell’s commentary on the idealistic vision of rebellion people have before the bloodshed begins. When reality sets in, the language all becomes far more grim and gloomy. This incremental transformation mirrors the real-world progression of many political movements, ones that begin with revolutionary ideals but end as oppressive, violent dictatorships.
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