Napoleon (Animal Farm)
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Napoleon is a fictional character in George Orwell's Animal Farm. While he is at first a common farm pig, he gets rid of Snowball, another pig which shares the power. He then takes advantage of the animals' uprising against their masters to eventually become the tyrannical "President of Animal Farm," which he turns into a dictatorship. Eventually, he becomes a corrupted dictator and exploits the other animals through violence and tyranny.
[edit] Napoleon in the Allegory
Napoleon was based on Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union for nearly 30 years. However, his name comes from that of the French general Napoleon Bonaparte, whom Orwell considered to be a repressive powerseeker and dictator. In the French version of the book, he was renamed César (Caesar).
From the start, he is made out to be a villain. Napoleon fights along with fellow pig Snowball to free the farm from human control, but afterwards is shown engaging in suspicious activity, such as drinking the milk the animals had gathered, and taking Bluebell and Jessie's puppies for himself. Napoleon chooses the date of the meeting concerning the farm's new windmill to turn on his former comrade and seize control of the farm; this mirrors the relationship between Stalin and Leon Trotsky. Trotsky supported Permanent Revolution (just as Snowball advocated overthrowing other farm owners), while Stalin supported Socialism in One Country (similar to Napoleon's idea of teaching the animals to use firearms).
Later on, after ostracizing Snowball, Napoleon ordered the construction of the windmill, which had been designed by Snowball and which he had opposed vigorously (just as Stalin opposed Trotsky's push for large scale industrialization, then adopted it as a policy when Trotsky was in exile). When the primitive windmill collapses due to Napoleon's poor planning, a reference to Stalin's backward approach to the Five-Year Plans, he blames Snowball and starts a wave of terror. During this period he orders the execution of several of the animals after coercing their "confessions" of wrongdoing. He also changes the Seven Commandments' prohibition against killing, drinking, and sleeping in beds. He then commands the building of a second, stronger windmill while severely cutting rations to all of the animals — except the pigs and dogs.
He later makes a deal with Frederick (similar to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact shortly before World War II); Frederick tricks Napoleon by paying him for the timber with counterfeit money and then invading the farm, much as Germany broke its pact with the Soviet Union and invaded, in order to seize its minerals and fuel. During the Battle of the Windmill, the windmill is destroyed, but the animals win, although they pay a high price. Napoleon attempts to cover the losses by stating it was a grand victory for the animals.
While Napoleon exhorts the other animals to fight and die for the good of the farm, he himself is a coward, in contrast to Snowball. Nonetheless, Napoleon's corrupt historical revisionism rewrites himself as a hero, claiming responsibility for the animal's victory during the Battle of the Cowshed when in reality it was Snowball who had performed heroic acts in this battle.
Ultimately, Napoleon becomes a tyrannical, oppressive dictator and seems to become one of the cruel humans through his adoption of human ways. At the end of the novel he has decided to abolish the use of 'comrade,' and declares that the farm shall revert to its original name of Manor Farm, reflecting the farm's change of status going back to the beginning.
In the end of the 1954 film, Napoleon wears dictator-like clothing and pictures of him, similar in nature to that of Mao Zedong's famous picture, are put up. On top of this, it seems that he is ultimately defeated by a horde of animals who destroy the farmhouse's dining room, where he and the other pigs are having a meeting.
However, in the book, the novel ends with Napoleon meeting with Pilkington of Foxwood farm. The pigs have become so much like humans, both in behavior and appearance, that the animals watching through a window from the outside cannot tell man and pig apart.[1]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Orwell, George. Animal Farm, page 141, Signet Classics, 1996. ISBN 9780451526342
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