Freedom of Speech in Animal Farm Essay Example

Does Animal Farm follow the first amendment? The first amendment guarantees freedom concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to the petition. It guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely. I think that in simple terms, it means that individuals, no matter what their religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition, have a right to speak freely. This is something everyone should follow because having freedom is important. I think that everyone should be able to speak their mind. The first amendment is so important in America because there would be so many problems that we have dealt with in the past. The reason we have abolished problems is that people speak up about the problems and why it should be abolished. Public speakers are a big part of today's society because we need people who speak out and make a point. If we didn’t have those people, our voices would never be heard. Animal Farm is a fitting example of breaking this amendment. The character who took this amendment from everyone on Animal Farm was Napoleon. There are many chapters that prove this, but I think that the most important chapter that explains this is chapter 5. This chapter is all about Napoleon killing animals when he didn’t like what they said. Napoleon didn’t let them have freedom of speech. He killed the animals even if they did nothing wrong. Chapter 5 just proves how bad of a person Napoleon is and how much he doesn't care about his allies. His allies did everything for him, and they trusted me. Napoleon broke their trust and tried to scare them by killing their close allies. Just like the amendments, Animal Farm had commandments that they had to follow, and Napoleon broke then changed them. When he killed those animals he broke the commandment, no animal shall kill another animal. Then, he changed the commandment to no animal shall kill another animal without cause. But Napoleon didn’t have a reason to kill the animals. They admitted that Snowball told them what to do and Napoleon killed them because he couldn’t get to Snowball. He was mad at Snowball, so he took it out on the animals. But the thing is, he killed animals who could have helped with the windmill. I believe he regretted killing them because he knew that the windmill would have been done faster if they were there. When the animals got killed, the only thing Boxer could come up with was to work harder. He also knew that work on the windmill would become harder with those animals gone, so he pushed himself even harder so the windmill would get done because he knew that the windmill being would make Napoleon happy so maybe he wouldn’t kill any more animals. Boxer worked himself harder than he usually did even though he worked as hard as he could. Boxer believed in the freedom of speech, so he tried his best to make other people believe. He thought maybe that there was a chance that the farm could be a civil place where no one was getting hurt. But Napoleon tried his best to make the farm the worst place in the world. All the animals hated Jones though,, so they made sure Napoleon stayed. They didn't see how bad Napoleon was because they thought they trusted him. Napoleon took the memory of Jones and took it to show that he was better and that Jones was a bad person. Even though Napoleon was the one who was killing the animals. He would cut off their food because he wanted all the pigs to get the food. Jones wouldn’t feed them enough, but not because he was selfish and wanted the food. He wanted to save money on food because he knew the farm wasn’t doing the best. Jones would have given them the right of speech, but they hated Jones so much they wouldn’t give him the power to control them. They did the opposite Jones wanted, but not because they didn’t want to but because they hated giving him control. They wanted control for themselves, but Napoleon took control and was worse than Jones. But they can’t put all the blame on Napoleon because Snowball was the exact same way. The whole reason for the animal farm without any leaders was not to have leaders in the first place. They didn’t want rules, but that is exactly what Snowball made. They didn’t speak because they knew they couldn’t change Snowball’s mind. They were scared to speak to him because they knew he didn’t believe in the 1st amendment. But he believed in all of his commandments. Some of the commandments were necessary, but some weren't. And the commandments that were necessary were common sense, so they already knew not to do it. Another reason they started animal farm was so they could get rid of humans and their lives. That was something Snowball believed in strongly. All the commandments besides two were about humans. “1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy” They believed all things with two legs were enemies just because of a couple humans. “2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend” I think they made this commandment to state that the birds were friends even though they have two legs. But this rule was broken many times, especially by Napoleon because he killed so many animals and it didn’t matter if they were friends or not. Rules 3, 4, and 5 are there to state that because they didn’t want humans at the farm, they didn’t act like humans. By the end of the book, Napoleon changed ever since commandment. So, they decided to simplify all the commandments to “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others”. This commandment also shows how the farm broke the first amendment. All the animals that were more equal than the others had the freedom of speech, but the animals that were just equal did not. It’s like in a TV show where they have the main characters who speak all the time, but then there are the background characters who never speak and just listen. The animals who are more equal or important are the main characters who speak and put their ideas in. They don’t get a weird look when they speak. But when the just equal animals or background characters speak, everyone is so confused about why they are speaking. But the difference is that the animals get killed when they speak and put in their opinion. Napoleon just didn’t give people the right to speak, and there was no reason. He would always do bad things but make up excuses on why he did them. The excuse for killing all the animals was that he wanted the animals to be safe from Snowball. We all know all he cares about is himself and if there was a big attack on an animal farm, he wouldn’t help anyone else besides himself. To sum up everything I have said, animal farm and Napoleon did not follow or believe in the first amendment.