Sunday, March 22, 2020

Animal Farm Essaytechniques free essay sample

Orwell believes that communism is dangerous to the public and is a form of enslaving the population of a free nation. In order to express his attitudes towards Russia’s political system Orwell wrote the text animal farm in the form of a satirical allegory, and utilized narrative elements such as Plot and Themes to deliver his moral, which elicits his attitudes, or feelings towards communism. In order to increase the target audience of the text and thus further raise awareness Orwell wrote animal farm in the form of a satirical novel. The effect of this decision was that the novel captivated its audience and despite a greater meaning, while still understandable by the younger populace. A satirical allegory is a text that ridicules aspects of something whilst utilizing symbolic characters or references. An example directly from the text itself is Orwell’s portrayal of Soviet Russia’s political leaders Stalin and Trotsky. We will write a custom essay sample on Animal Farm Essaytechniques or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page In the text Orwell portrays these men as pigs, which are often associated with greed and selfishness. Such selfishness occurred with Russia’s political leaders, who oppressed the population and lived the high life while their people suffered. This idea of greed in political leaders is also further reinforced by the progression of the characters through the plot. As mentioned earlier, being an allegory Animal farm symbolically references both people as well as events. The events, or actual plot of animal farm was intended to mirror the events of the Russian revolution, albeit portraying them in a fitting way. As the plot unfolds, and the characters develop we begin to see through events the greed, and slow class stratification that results. We begin to see as Orwell intends, that under the communist system hat animal farm assumes after the revolution; that when rivaling parties are chased out, and only one political party remains, a free nation slowly transforms into one of oppression under a totalitarian leader. These events act to elicit the idea of communism being very dangerous to the freedom of society and the general public, which were virtually enslaved by their leaders and worked to death for the sole benefit of th eir leaders. Another method of communication used by Orwell to display his attitude towards Soviet Russia’s political system is themes. Orwell makes extensive use of the themes of greed and the control of society through propaganda to show the negative effects of a communist government. In Animal Farm, the greed of the pigs causes them to enslave their fellow animals through the use of a consistent bombardment of propaganda which literally brainwashes the animals into believing they are working for themselves rather than their tyrant leaders. This mirrors communist Russia in the forties where propaganda and even religion were used to control the population and make them believe that they were all working to benefit themselves, when in reality this was not the case. George Orwell’s combination of these parallel events in the plot with real events in communist Russia, and use of themes to reinforce his ideas contained within his satirical allegory, act to elicit the idea that communism itself. Whether it be in Russia or elsewhere, it is destructive on the lives of the entire working population of the nation, and even though equality is promoted, greed consumes the leaders. This results in extreme class stratification, which leads to a society by which the population is almost lifeless and where are all working for the benefit of the political leaders.

Thursday, March 5, 2020

On the origin of speaking - Emphasis

On the origin of speaking On the origin of speaking Last Thursday marked the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin: an event that did not go uncelebrated at Emphasis HQ. And even as we hung the streamers and tied up the balloons we were silently thanking the birthday boy for explaining the opposable thumbs that allowed us to do it. I mean, of course, his theory of natural selection: that particular cause of evolution that pits genes in competition with each other so that organisms can win the reproduction war, becoming increasingly sophisticated in tiny increments along the way. The roots and evolution of language have proved trickier to reconcile with Darwins magnum opus. The fact that humans happily chat away from an early age while chimps our closest relatives in the animal kingdom stay stoically silent has led to doubts on the subject. Possible suggestions for our capacity for communication are as varied as Divine bestowment or a coincidental by-product of some other adaptation process. (For example, bones are white not for aesthetic reasons but because they are strengthened with calcium. Which is white.) But theres hope yet for hard-line Darwinist linguists. Steven Pinker suggests humans have a language instinct, * which has been gradually honed for 200,000 years: this explains why children begin to pick up pretty complex grammar before they even go to school; why every community and tribe ever discovered has a stable language with regulated grammar and syntax; and why even people deaf from birth include these features in their sign language. And we cant possibly learn it by rote since it is virtually limitless: we can use it to form endlessly innovative combinations of words. Theres no reason to expect chimps to have this innate ability (tea adverts aside) because we are not descended from them directly: we share a common (extinct) ancestor. Developing our brains in this unique way is no odder, Pinker points out, than an elephant developing a trunk. In business, out-performing your rivals is still vital for survival. So were here to help your writing evolve: we like to think of ourselves as the winning gene. And hopefully that Darwin would be proud. * For more on this see Steven Pinker The Language Instinct (Penguin Books Ltd 1994)