Post-Reading Entry #2 (by Kyle)

Animal Farm had a lot of quotes that really spoke volumes to me as I read this book. I want to take the time to look at these different quotes and attempt to analyze them (there were a few quotes I've already talked about in earlier entrees so I won't look at those again):

1. "Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself."
-I thought this quote was very true, but there is a reasoning behind things being this way; in real life, animals are not as intelligent as they are in Animal Farm. As Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection says, it's about the "survival of the fittest."

2. "'I have no wish to take life, not even human life,' repeated Boxer, and his eyes were full of tears."
-This quote seemed important when I read it because it showed that some of the animals were leaning toward being sympathetic for the humans despite what their newly created society was all about.

3. "Old Benjamin, the donkey, seemed quite unchanged since the Rebellion. He did his work in the same slow obstinate way as he had done it in Jones's time, never shirking and never volunteering for extra work either. About the Rebellion and its results he would express no opinion. When asked whether he was not happier now that Jones was gone, he would say only 'Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey,' and the others had to be content with this cryptic answer."
-The irony behind this quote is that Benjamin was still alive at the end of the novel, even though he was one of the older animals on the farm. He seemed to be one of the few innocent animals who knew all about what the pigs were doing, but he didn't seem to care about it most of the time.

4. "Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure. On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. 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?"
-This was a big moment where Squealer was able to work his speaking skills to persuade the animals about why the changes that were being made were being made in the first place. Squealer may be one of the most deceiving characters I've ever read about in literature just because of his excellent persuasiveness.

5. "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
-This quote was one of my favorites (it was the last line in the whole novel). This was because it represented the hypocrisy of the pigs, considering when the society was first started, they were completely against human ideas. They only became what they didn't want to be.