Talis Aubier-Hatch
As America waves the new President into office, we’ve already seen drastic shifts and changes in the way our nation is governed. From ICE raids threatening to tear immigrant families apart to the drastic name change from the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” it’s clear that these upcoming 4 years are going to be hard for us all. But it’s times like these where we want nothing more than to distract ourselves from reality and to find something that helps us better understand the world we live in now. One of the best ways to go about this is through one word: reading.
Reading books is a great way to immerse yourself into a new world and away from the one you’re living in, but some of these books are more than just great houses, hobbits, and sandworms. Some can even be used to compare the circumstances of the world on paper to the world we have today. One book comes to mind when thinking about life imitating art: George Orwell’s 1945 classic, “Animal Farm”. I read the novel in my freshman year and could not help but notice the similarities between the novel and the current upheaval in our country.
Animal Farm tells the story of a society where the very thing the animals banished from their farm becomes the very model for their new society. Animal Farm’s plot begins on the Manor Farm, where pigs, horses, sheep, dogs and other farm animals live under the watchful and tyrannical eye of Mr. Jones, the owner of the farm. However, that is soon to change when an old and wise pig, Old Major, gives his speech about the dream he had, a dream where the animals are free from this oppressive human rule. This sparks the chain of events which overthrows Mr. Jones, and leaves the animals to form their own form of government, which starts as a peaceful settlement belonging to all animals, but slowly transforms into a hellish labor camp where the pigs stand above all.
Let’s take a deep dive into the real heart of the story, and really try to understand where the ties can be made. In Animal Farm, a major aspect which changes the world around the animals is the leadership issues between two pigs: Snowball and Napoleon. On one side of the coin you have Snowball who is, in all ways, for the welfare of the animals. He wants to improve their lives and bring them away from this loop of servitude and loyalty to humans that the farm animals once faced. He is not hungry for power, but rather simply trying to better the nation overall. But the way that this connects to our current government is not in the sense of a specific person, but rather an ideal. Snowball is what all political leaders should be, powerful yet caring for the people and constantly trying to better their lives. Snowball also creates a set of rules for these animals to follow, rules which, much like our own amendments, stops the animals from becoming like their previously oppressive rulers and guides them into becoming their own independent people.
However, there’s always the darker side of things, and that’s exactly what Napoleon is. Easily, he could represent not just the dark presidents of the past, but our current president. Much like Napoleon bending Snowball’s rules to make them more appealing to the powerful, Trump has taken our country’s amendments and has begun to twist them in ways which favor only him. For example, just recently the Washington Post killed their opinion section under order of Jeff Bezos, and who does Jeff Bezos align with? Trump.
The book itself fosters connections between the world George Orwell created and the world we’re living in now. A quote from the book that really brings this factor to light however is something which Napoleon writes in his morphing of Snowball’s rules. Originally, one of the major points of Snowball’s rules for the farm was that “All animals are equal,” a defining message for the book. However once Napoleon comes to power, this rule is that last he touches in his slow shift, and what he changes it too is something that really speaks to the world Trump’s government is going to create. The new rule reads “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” This is by far the strongest quote I can use to compare to today. Look at the world we live in, and look at what’s happening. People who are undocumented, and are working so hard to obtain citizenship, and those who were born here from undocumented parents, and even those who have obtained temporary citizenship, are all at risk of losing their right to live in the United States and their progress in striving to do so legally. These people, who have remained for years and who have fought to become equal to every other man or woman in the U.S., are now under threat of having their fight for equality completely halted. It’s scary, but it’s also the world we live in.
Times are scary, and it’s always ok to be scared of what’s to come, but we also cannot back away from the issues that are about to arise. In Animal Farm, the more powerful Napoleon got, the more fearful the animals became of him, up until the point that they would not fight his rule in fear of being torn to pieces by his guard dogs, and the same could be said about today’s society. Looking around, it’s clear that we are afraid of what’s coming, but we can’t let that stop us. Already, we’ve seen protests, articles, movements, and speeches. Just recently, the Associated Press was banned from the White House conference room because they refused to acknowledge Trump’s Gulf of America change. That might look like just another suppression of the media, but the reason that they were banned? that’s fighting. The protests on the ICE raids and new immigration policies? Fighting. The outrage of posts on social media of people showing sympathy for those affected by these changes? Fighting. Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show at this year’s Super Bowl? Fighting.
We cannot yield to the things that are coming, not like the animals yielded to the oppression of the pigs. We are fighting, we will continue to fight, and we won’t stop fighting until our rights and our freedom is realized once again. So I’ll leave you with this final quote from the book, and a question. Are Trump and his personally selected cabinet coming too close to a dictatorship? Are we about to be living in a world where “Big Brother” is always watching? I couldn’t say, but we’re closing in on something bad, and soon enough, we’ll stare through the windows of the White House conference room, and we’ll look from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; and find it impossible to say which is which.