I took it upon myself to reread animal Farm novel just to refresh my memory George Orwell the author of the Animal farm recounted what happened in Russia using animals but what he wrote happens in our country Nigeria today more especially this SEALING N9.2BN CONTRACT FOR PURCHASE OF 750, 000 STOVES FOR WOMEN is not far fetch from what he limned. George Orwell offers commentary on the development of class tyranny and the human tendency to maintain and re-establish class structures even in societies that allegedly stand for total equality. The novella illustrates how classes that are initially unified in the face of a common enemy, (during the Military Rule civilians were Unified in Nigeria, shoving for civilian rule), as the animals are against the humans, may become internally divided when that enemy is eliminated. The expulsion of Mr. Jones (Military rule) creates a power vacuum, and it is only so long before the next oppressor(Rulling Party) assumes totalitarian control (Since 1999 we started civilian rule). The natural division between intellectual and physical labour quickly comes to express itself as a new set of class divisions, with the “brainworkers” (as the pigs claim to be ‘as our politicians claims to be’ ) using their superior intelligence to manipulate society to their own benefit. Orwell never clarifies in Animal Farm whether this negative state of affairs constitutes an inherent aspect of society or merely an outcome contingent on the integrity of a society’s intelligentsia. In either case, the novella points to the force of this tendency toward class stratification in many communities and the threat that it poses to democracy and freedom. THE BARN (GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS) If you understand the context of the barn at Animal Farm, on whose outside walls the pigs paint the Seven Commandments and, later, their revisions, represents the collective memory of Our Government today in Nigeria. The many scenes in which the ruling-class pigs alter the principles of Animalism and in which the working-class animals (Nigerians) puzzle over but accept these changes represent the way an institution in power can revise a community’s concept of history to bolster its control. If the working class believes history to lie on the side of their oppressors, they are less likely to question oppressive practices. Moreover, the oppressors, by revising their nation’s conception of its origins and development, gain control of the nation’s very identity, and the oppressed come to depend upon the authorities for their communal sense of self. George Orwell has a foresight.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 16:40:39 +0000