Submitted by
Avery Beacham
Fall semester 2013
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of Tenth Grade Honors Literature
Animal farm is a classic portrayal of how power can affect the goals and hopes of society. Animal farm, a story by George Orwell begins with a revolution, and a lot of hopes for a perfect society being developed by the animals by kicking off the humans from the farm but slowly the leading officials, the pigs, get a taste of power and from then on things began to change. A very important part of the novel is the irony George Orwell used to make this novel what it is. In this story, irony is used to show lack of equality, no matter what the original intent was, can result in oppression. Orwell used three types of irony in his story: dramatic irony, verbal irony, and situational irony. Irony helps develop the story and improves the overall quality of the writing. Dramatic irony is inherent in speeches or a situation of drama which is understood by the reader but not gasped by the characters in the story. A scene in the story that shows the irony is when Boxer “the horse” is sent off to be slaughtered. The animals are told by squealer that he is being sent off to the hospital, but the readers know that he is not being sent to the hospital. George Orwell used Dramatic irony to make the reader jump out of there sits and tell the animals what is really happening to them and how their being fooled by the pigs. Also when the animals where told by Napoleon that the windmill was knocked down by snowball when it was actually knocked down by the storm.Verbal irony is when a person or a character in the story says or writes something but means another thing. “No animals may drink alcohol” was one of the seven commandments which were made by the pigs. Later in the story the pigs started drinking alcohol and then they changed the commandment to “no animal may drink alcohol to excess”. Another verbal irony was “all animals are created