Thesis on "Prince Film Richard III and Animal Farm"

Thesis 6 pages (1900 words) Sources: 2 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Ruthless Abuse of Power in the Prince, Richard III and Animal Farm

Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, the film Richard III and George Orwell's Animal Farm all have something in common: They are all about ruthless leaders who abuse their power to make other people do whatever they want. . In "Animal Farm" Mr. Jones used his power to force the animals to work hard for him. The animals didn't get enough to eat and felt that they were being used as slaves. The only animals that were well fed were the pigs, who also ended up being ruthless power-mad dictators. In Richard III, the main character also abuses his power, by being deceitful, calculating and ruthless in his attempt to steal the throne from his brother Edward. He is completely obsessed with power and will do whatever it takes get more of it. In The Prince, Machiavelli describes the perfect leader as being just like Mr. Jones, the pigs and Richard III. He claims that in order for a leader to be successful, he has to use his power to control others, and be very calculating and devious. Therefore, my thesis is that what all three of these works have in common is that power is used as a means of control, and cruel behavior is rewarded.

Although there are certainly many differences between these three works, the themes of Richard III and The Prince are eerily similar to the conditions on Manor Farm in Animal Farm. In Animal Farm, Mr. Jones holds his power over the animals in order to make them work for him all day and get very little in return. The animals feel very abused and oppressed, so this naturally makes them angry. What makes them even more angry is the fact that the farmer shows obvious favoritism to the pigs. This, of course, stirsd up resentment and jealousy on the part of the other animals.

As the animals begin to notice more and more how unfair everything is on the farm, they begin to become overwhelmed with the desire to fight for justice and for their own independence. While originally they only expressed their dissatisfaction with the situation to one another verbally, after being left to starve for an extremely long period of time, they finally got mad enough to organize themselves and overthrow the evil farmer. The pigs are actually the ones who lead the rebellion and unfortunately, the other animals fail to recognize that the pigs are merely replacing the authority of Mr. Jones.

We can see a similar pattern of events take place in Richard III. Just like the animals on Manor Farm, Richard is extremely jealous of all the rewards that his brother Edward receives. Like the animals, he also feels that he is being treated unfairly and wants to overthrow the person that has the power that he wants. So he plots and schemes to do just that. He uses other people and manipulates them to get them to do what he wants, and he has no shame about it.

Machievelli would have probably been very proud of the pigs in Animal Farm and of Richard III because they are exactly the type of leaders that he supports and encourages leaders to be. Machiavelli thinks that manipulating people is great - but when that doesn't work, then it is perfectly fine to resort to forcing them to do what you want them to do. He wrote "people are by nature changeable. It is easy to persuade them about some particular matter, but it is hard to hold them to that persuasion. Hence it is necessary to provide that when they no longer believe, they can be forced to believe" (Chapter VI).

The events in Richard III took place because, like the animals on the farm, Richard felt that he was being treating them unfairly. Both Richard and the animals felt oppressed and hungered for freedom and justice, which drove them to band together with others who felt the same way and convince them to rebel and fight for what it was they really wanted.

Ironically, both Richard and the animals on the farm did get what they thought they wanted. But as it turned out, they were in an even worse situation than they started out being in. As soon as Richard became king, not only did he realize that he was now all alone, but he was also thrown immediately into a situation of war that was disastrous to his kingdom. The animals on Manor farm got what they wanted by attacking Mr. Jones, only to find out that they were actually being controlled by the pigs all along and nothing had really changed. Both of these rebellions eventually led to independence but that independence had an unforeseeable snag that trapped both the farm Animals and Richard III in an ironic situation. The irony I am speaking of is the fact that whenever one oppressor is overthrown, there will always be another one to take its place, and the people (or the animals, in Orwell's case) will allow this to happen. This snag has proven to be a part of rebellion since time began, yet as Orwell showed so clearly in terms of the blind faith the "common animals" had in the pigs, there will always be some classes that are stronger than others and they will always choose to dominate the weaker classes and the weaker classes will always let them. This premise is as the heart of Machiavelli's theories in The Prince.

In all three of these works, the oppressed are considered to be simple and therefore easily fooled by the leaders. For example, in Animal Farm, Orwell writes "The pigs had an even harder struggle to counteract the lies put about by Moses, the tame raven. Moses, who was Mr. Jones's especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which al animals went when they died. It was situated somewhere up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work but some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, and the pigs had to argue very hard to persuade them that there was no such place" (p. 16).

Like the pigs who are able to use soft language and fancy words to convince the other animals that the rules they are setting are for everyone's good rather than just their own, the leader described in The Prince will find success using this same premise. Also, Richard III's brother Clarence and his wife Lady Anne, along with many other people, fall for Richards lies and schemes over and over again, never really learning their lesson or being entirely aware that they are being made fools of. Like the animals in Animal Farm, they hungrily swallowed up just about every lie that was fed to them.

In the Prince, Machiavelli acknowledges that while honesty is the ideal, it is unrealistic; a concept that Richard III and the pigs took to the extreme: "How praiseworthy it is for a prince to keep his word and to live by integrity and not by deceit everyone knows; nevertheless, one sees from the experience of our times that the princes who have accomplished great deeds are those who have cared little for keeping their promises and who have known how to manipulate the minds of men by shrewdness; and in the end they have surpassed those who laid their foundations upon loyalty" (Chapter XVIII).

As Orwell's story demonstrates, the animals are under the illusion that they are managing their own affairs when in truth they are being ruled by a 'pig oligarchy' under which the other animals are treated as cruelly as ever. In Animal Farm there was no opposition to the oligarchy, like there was towards Mr. Jones. The pigs had control of everything but they were able to disguise that power behind their lies and politician-like smiles. In doing so, they were able to manipulate the other animals into believing that they were all being treated as equals when in truth, the pigs changed the commandments every time it suited their own selfish purposes.

For example, one of the original seven commandments was that "No animal shall drink alcohol" (p. 22). This was inspired by Mr. Jones coming home drunk and forgetting to feed the animals, and as with all acts of rebellion, the goal is to do the opposite of what the oppressor has done. However the commandment was changed when the Commander pig got drunk. The law was changed merely to get him out of trouble. Yet the pigs were able to convince the other… READ MORE

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