On Purposeless Evil in George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984

Abstract

It is generally known that George Orwell’s dystopias, Animal Farm and 1984 are about, most of all, human evils related to totalitarianism oppressing human rights and liberty. But most of Orwell’s critics have focused on general evils (which could be called “motivated,” “strategic” evils) that have been practised in human world. This paper, accordingly, focuses on and analyzes the so-called “purposeless” evils exercised mostly by power-group, who have power-instinct for its own sake as does everybody deep down in their dark, unconscious psychology. To prove this critical argument, Animal Farm and 1984 are respectively analyzed and interpreted in great detail. In Animal Farm the subject practising such an excessive, sadistic evils is the pig Napoleon, his evil-doings exceeding the extent of human understanding in their cruelty and inhumanity. 1984 is in this sense a far more extended, complicated version about a human instinct loving power sorely for its own sake without no further motivation at all. In this case the Inner party represented by the Big Brother and O’Brien is the central power-group who demand not just obedience but also pain and humiliation to the extreme from people below. In sum, despite some negative criticisms about Orwell’s literary survival in the future, it can be surmised that Orwell’s two novels will last not just as valuable dystopias but also as great literary warnings about human dark potential of power-love, which is to be constantly reminded, checked, and sublimated eventually.