Tuesday, September 24, 2013

How could the Commandments be considered a vice in Animal Farm?

The animals chose the commandments because they wanted to
keep the farm pure from human activity.  They considered humans evil, and therefore
tried to find ways to avoid emulating them.


readability="7">

Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man
from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever. (ch
1)



Therefore the commandments
were written to avoid man’s vices, or weaknesses and immoral deeds.  There are
commandments against killing other animals, but there are also rules against wearing
clothes, sleeping in a bed, and drinking alcohol (ch 2).  These are considered man’s
weaknesses.


Although most humans consider killing a sin,
you have to look a little deeper to find the problems with the other infractions. 
Wearing clothes could be considered vanity, and sleeping in a bed might be sloth (one of
the deadly sins).  Drinking alcohol is often considered
gluttony.


The commandments do not last long.  The pigs
decide that they want some of these luxuries, and they begin changing the
commandments.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is the meaning of the 4th stanza of Eliot's Preludes, especially the lines "I am moved by fancies...Infinitely suffering thing".

A century old this year, T.S. Eliot's Preludes raises the curtain on his great modernist masterpieces, The Love...