Animal Farm

“The real power behind Napoleon’s success is Squealer”

In the novel “animal farm” there are many themes and main ideas, but the most common theme that occurs throughout the text is propaganda, and how Napoleon uses Squealer to control and spy on the other animals. There is no doubt that without Squealer, Napoleon could not have had the tight grip on animal farm as he had. Napoleon is the self appointed leader of animal farm, he assumes supreme power over all the population of the farm, yet, due to Napoleon’s dependence on Squealer to look-over and control the animals in animal farm, Squealer could arguably have the most power over all of the farm, and not Napoleon as first believed.

Throughout history, leaders of both communist and monarchist countries have used propaganda to control the thoughts of their citizens. In the novel, propaganda was used, much in the same way as in communist Russia, to control what the animals feel and think about a certain issues. Squealer uses his skill of speech to manipulate the minds of the animals, (Chapter 5, page 47 "No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions comrades, and then where should we be?) supposedly Napoleon would enjoy to hand the power to the less intelligent animals, but seeing that they are not as smart as he is it would be better to let him run the farm. In reality squealer and Napoleon are using the animals’ stupidity as an excuse to have an undisputed leadership of the farm.