In at least 150 words, discuss Orwell's use of figurative and connotative language and the ways in which his language affects the tone of his works.

Answer:

Orwell makes extensive use of animal sounds and movements to describe action; his figurative usage turns ordinary description into onomatopoeia. Animal characters are "stirring" and "fluttering" in movement while "cheeping feebly" and "grunting" communications. Old Major, the father figure of the animal's revolution, sings the rallying song "Beasts of England." Orwell describes the answering chorus in a frenzy of onomatopoeic imagery: "the cows lowed it, the dogs whined it, the sheep bleated it, the ducks quacked it." As the ruling class of pigs becomes more human, Orwell subtly drops barnyard verbiage and instead uses "said" for dialogue attributions.

Orwell, in "Why I Write," says he often wrote for political purposes to expose propaganda as well as describe it. "Animal Farm" satirizes propagandized phrases by using extended metaphors to create slogans. For example, "Four legs good, two legs bad" becomes a constantly repeated, ultimately meaningless sentiment. Orwell's characterizing human beings as the metaphoric "Man" creates doctrine such as "Remove Man from the scene and ... hunger and overwork are abolished forever." The animal's former owner, Farmer Jones, becomes an extended metaphor for evil and oppression; if the animals shirk their duties, "Jones will come back."

Personified Rebellion:

When Orwell describes the animal revolution that threatens to overrun England, his figurative language recreates the rebellion and its song as living entities in personification. "A wave of rebelliousness ran through the country," he notes, and the "Beasts of England" ditty "was irrepressible." Humans that hearken to it "secretly trembled, hearing in it a prophecy of their future doom." Orwell even sends his personified tune as an invader into the community at large: "It got into the din of smithies [blacksmiths] and the tunes of church bells." Hammer, anvil or bell, the song persists.

Allusions to Stalin:

Orwell uses allusion to characterize his novel's antagonist as two despots in one. Comrade Napoleon, a Berkshire boar named for French world conqueror Napoleon Bonaparte, occasionally alludes to Joseph Stalin, Russia's totalitarian dictator. The boar maintains vicious dogs as secret police. He attacks the porker Snowball, driving him into exile as Stalin did his former friend and revolutionary supporter, Leon Trotsky. He has a personality cult that cries "Comrade Napoleon [the boar] is always right." He even has a propagandist, the clever Squealer, who, as Orwell notes, "could turn black into white."