The Old Man and The Sea: DAY 05

Summary

Early the next morning, Manolin comes to the old man’s shack, and the sight of his friend’s ravaged hands brings him to tears. He goes to fetch coffee. Fishermen have gathered around Santiago’s boat and measured the carcass at eighteen feet. Manolin waits for the old man to wake up, keeping his coffee warm for him so it is ready right away. When the old man wakes, he and Manolin talk warmly. Santiago says that the sharks beat him, and Manolin insists that he will work with the old man again, regardless of what his parents say. He reveals that there had been a search for Santiago involving the coast guard and planes. Santiago is happy to have someone to talk to, and after he and Manolin make plans, the old man sleeps again. Manolin leaves to find food and the newspapers for the old man, and to tell Pedrico that the marlin’s head is his. That afternoon two tourists at the terrace café mistake the great skeleton for that of a shark. Manolin continues to watch over the old man as he sleeps and dreams of the lions.

Analysis

Given the depth of Santiago’s tragedy most likely Santiago will never have the opportunity to catch another such fish in his lifetime.The Old Man and the Sea ends on a rather optimistic note. Santiago is reunited with Manolin, who desperately wants to complete his training. All of the old man’s noble qualities and, more important, the lessons he draws from his experience, will be passed on to the boy, which means that the fisherman’s life will continue on, in some form, even after his death. The promise of triumph and regeneration is supported by the closing image of the book. For the third time, Santiago returns to his dream of the lions at play on the African beaches. As an image that recalls the old man’s youth, the lions suggest the circularity of life. They also suggest the harmony the lions are, after all, playing that exists between the opposing forces of nature.

The hope that Santiago clings to at the novella’s close is not the hope that comes from naïveté. It is, rather, a hope that comes from experience, of something new emerging from something old, as a phoenix rises out of the ashes. The novella states as much when Santiago reflects that “a man can be destroyed but not defeated.” The destruction of the marlin is not a defeat for Santiago; rather, it leads to his redemption. Indeed, the fishermen who once mocked him now stand in awe of him. The decimation of the marlin, of course, is a significant loss. The sharks strip Santiago of his greater glory as surely as they strip the great fish of its flesh. But to view the shark attack as precipitating only loss is to see but half the picture. When Santiago says, “Fishing kills me exactly as it keeps me alive,” he is pointing, once again, to the vast, necessary, and ever-shifting tension that exists between loss and gain, triumph and defeat, life and death.

In the final pages of the novella, Hemingway employs a number of images that link Santiago to Christ, the model of transcendence, who turned loss into gain, defeat into triumph, and even death into new life. Hemingway unabashedly paints the old man as a crucified martyr: as soon as the sharks arrive, the narrator comments that the noise Santiago made resembled the noise one would make “feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood.” The narrator’s description of Santiago’s return to town also recalls the crucifixion. As the old man struggles up the hill with his mast across his shoulders, the reader cannot help but recall Christ’s march toward Calvary. Even the position in which he collapses on his bed—he sleeps facedown on the newspapers with his arms out straight and the palms of his hands up—brings to mind the image of Christ suffering on the cross.

Source: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/oldman/section5.rhtml

The Old Man and The Sea: DAY 04

Summary

The marlin wakes Santiago by jerking the line. The fish jumps out of the water again and again, and Santiago is thrown into the bow of the skiff, facedown in his dolphin meat. The line feeds out fast, and the old man brakes against it with his back and hands. His left hand, especially, is badly cut. Santiago wishes that the boy were with him to wet the coils of the line, which would lessen the friction.

The old man wipes the crushed dolphin meat off his face, fearing that it will make him nauseated and he will lose his strength. Looking at his damaged hand, he reflects that “pain does not matter to a man.” He eats the second flying fish in hopes of building up his strength. As the sun rises, the marlin begins to circle. For hours the old man fights the circling fish for every inch of line, slowly pulling it in. He feels faint and dizzy and sees black spots before his eyes. The fish riots against the line, battering the boat with its spear. When it passes under the boat, Santiago cannot believe its size. As the marlin continues to circle, Santiago adds enough pressure to the line to bring the fish closer and closer to the skiff. The old man thinks that the fish is killing him, and admires him for it, saying, “I do not care who kills who.” Eventually, he pulls the fish onto its side by the boat and plunges his harpoon into it. The fish lurches out of the water, brilliantly and beautifully alive as it dies. When it falls back into the water, its blood stains the waves.

The old man pulls the skiff up alongside the fish and fastens the fish to the side of the boat. He thinks about how much money he will be able to make from such a big fish, and he imagines that DiMaggio would be proud of him. Santiago’s hands are so cut up that they resemble raw meat. With the mast up and the sail drawn, man, fish, and boat head for land. In his light-headed state, the old man finds himself wondering for a moment if he is bringing the fish in or vice versa. He shakes some shrimp from a patch of gulf weed and eats them raw. He watches the marlin carefully as the ship sails on. The old man’s wounds remind him that his battle with the marlin was real and not a dream.

An hour later, a mako shark arrives, having smelled the marlin’s blood. Except for its jaws full of talonlike teeth, the shark is a beautiful fish. When the shark hits the marlin, the old man sinks his harpoon into the shark’s head. The shark lashes on the water and, eventually, sinks, taking the harpoon and the old man’s rope with it. The mako has taken nearly forty pounds of meat, so fresh blood from the marlin spills into the water, inevitably drawing more sharks to attack. Santiago realizes that his struggle with the marlin was for nothing; all will soon be lost. But, he muses, “a man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

Santiago tries to cheer himself by thinking that DiMaggio would be pleased by his performance, and he wonders again if his hands equal DiMaggio’s bone spurs as a handicap. He tries to be hopeful, thinking that it is silly, if not sinful, to stop hoping. He reminds himself that he didn’t kill the marlin simply for food, that he killed it out of pride and love. He wonders if it is a sin to kill something you love. The shark, on the other hand, he does not feel guilty about killing, because he did it in self-defense. He decides that “everything kills everything else in some way.”

Two hours later, a pair of shovel-nosed sharks arrives, and Santiago makes a noise likened to the sound a man might make as nails are driven through his hands. The sharks attack, and Santiago fights them with a knife that he had lashed to an oar as a makeshift weapon. He enjoyed killing the mako because it was a worthy opponent, a mighty and fearless predator, but he has nothing but disdain for the scavenging shovel-nosed sharks. The old man kills them both, but not before they take a good quarter of the marlin, including the best meat. Again, Santiago wishes that he hadn’t killed the marlin. He apologizes to the dead marlin for having gone out so far, saying it did neither of them any good.

Still hopeful that the whole ordeal had been a dream, Santiago cannot bear to look at the mutilated marlin. Another shovel-nosed shark arrives. The old man kills it, but he loses his knife in the process. Just before nightfall, two more sharks approach. The old man’s arsenal has been reduced to the club he uses to kill bait fish. He manages to club the sharks into retreat, but not before they repeatedly maul the marlin. Stiff, sore, and weary, he hopes he does not have to fight anymore. He even dares to imagine making it home with the half-fish that remains. Again, he apologizes to the marlin carcass and attempts to console it by reminding the fish how many sharks he has killed. He wonders how many sharks the marlin killed when it was alive, and he pledges to fight the sharks until he dies. Although he hopes to be lucky, Santiago believes that he “violated [his] luck” when he sailed too far out.

Around midnight, a pack of sharks arrives. Near-blind in the darkness, Santiago strikes out at the sounds of jaws and fins. Something snatches his club. He breaks off the boat’s tiller and makes a futile attempt to use it as a weapon. When the last shark tries to tear at the tough head of the marlin, the old man clubs the shark until the tiller splinters. He plunges the sharp edge into the shark’s flesh and the beast lets go. No meat is left on the marlin.

The old man spits blood into the water, which frightens him for a moment. He settles in to steer the boat, numb and past all feeling. He asks himself what it was that defeated him and concludes, “Nothing . . . I went out too far.” When he reaches the harbor, all lights are out and no one is near. He notices the skeleton of the fish still tied to the skiff. He takes down the mast and begins to shoulder it up the hill to his shack. It is terrifically heavy, and he is forced to sit down five times before he reaches his home. Once there, the old man sleeps.

Analysis

The fantastical final stage of the old man’s fight with the fish brings two thematic issues to the forefront. The first concerns man’s place in nature, the second concerns nature itself. It is possible to interpret Santiago’s journey as a cautionary tale of sorts, a tragic lesson about what happens when man’s pride forces him beyond the boundaries of his rightful, human place in the world. This interpretation is undermined, however, by the fact that Santiago finds the place where he is most completely, honestly, and fully himself only by sailing out farther than he ever has before. Indeed, Santiago has not left his true place; he has found it, which suggests that man’s greatest potential can be found in his return to the natural world from which modern advancements have driven him.

At one point, Santiago embraces his unity with the marlin, thinking, “You are killing me, fish . . . But you have a right to . . . brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills who.” This realization speaks to the novella’s theory of the natural world. As Santiago’s exhausting and near-endless battle with the marlin shows, his is a world in which life and death go hand in loving hand. Everything in the world must die, and according to Santiago, only a brotherhood between men or creatures can alleviate the grimness of that fact. The death of the marlin serves as a beautiful case in point, for as the fish dies it is not only transformed into something larger than itself, it is also charged with life: “Then the fish came alive, with his death in him.” In Hemingway’s conception of the natural world, beauty is deadly, age is strength, and death is the greatest instance of vitality.

The transformation that the fish undergoes upon its death anticipates the transformation that awaits Santiago in the novella’s final pages. The old man’s battle with the fish is marked by supreme pain and suffering, but he lives in a world in which extreme pain can be a source of triumph rather than defeat. The key to Santiago’s triumph, as the end of the novel makes clear, is an almost martyrlike endurance, a quality that the old man knows and values. Santiago repeatedly reminds himself that physical pain does not matter to a man, and he urges himself to keep his head clear and to know how to suffer like a man.

After the arrival of the mako shark, Santiago seems preoccupied with the notion of hope. Hope is shown to be a necessary component of endurance, so much so that the novella seems to suggest that endurance can be found wherever pain and hope meet. As Santiago sails on while the sharks continue to attack his catch, the narrator says that Santiago “was full of resolution but he had little hope”; later, the narrator comments, “He hit [the shark] without hope but with resolution.” But without hope Santiago has reason neither to fight the sharks nor to return home. He soon realizes that it is silly not to hope, and he even goes so far as to consider it a sin. Ultimately, he overcomes the shark attack by bearing it. The poet and critic Delmore Schwartz regards The Old Man and the Sea as a dramatic development in Hemingway’s career because Santiago’s “sober hope” strikes a sort of compromise between youthful naïveté and the jadedness of age. Before the novella, Hemingway had given the world heroes who lived either shrouded by illusions, such as Nick Adams in “Indian Camp,” or crushed by disillusionment, such as Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms.

Source: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/oldman/section4.rhtml

The Old Man and The Sea: DAY 03

Summary

A small, tired warbler (a type of bird) lands on the stern of the skiff, flutters around Santiago’s head, then perches on the taut fishing line that links the old man to the big fish. The old man suspects that it is the warbler’s first trip, and that it knows nothing of the hawks that will meet the warbler as it nears land. Knowing that the warbler cannot understand him, the old man tells the bird to stay and rest up before heading toward shore. Just then the marlin surges, nearly pulling Santiago overboard, and the bird departs. Santiago notices that his hand is bleeding from where the line has cut it.

Aware that he will need to keep his strength, the old man makes himself eat the tuna he caught the day before, which he had expected to use as bait. While he cuts and eats the fish with his right hand, his already cut left hand cramps and tightens into a claw under the strain of taking all the fish’s resistance. Santiago is angered and frustrated by the weakness of his own body, but the tuna, he hopes, will reinvigorate the hand. As he eats, he feels a brotherly desire to feed the marlin too.

While waiting for the cramp in his hand to ease, Santiago looks across the vast waters and thinks himself to be completely alone. A flight of ducks passes overhead, and he realizes that it is impossible for a man to be alone on the sea. The slant of the fishing line changes, indicating to the old fisherman that the fish is approaching the surface. Suddenly, the fish leaps magnificently into the air, and Santiago sees that it is bigger than any he has ever witnessed; it is two feet longer than the skiff itself. Santiago declares it “great” and promises never to let the fish learn its own strength. The line races out until the fish slows to its earlier pace. By noon, the old man’s hand is uncramped, and though he claims he is not religious, he says ten Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers and promises that, if he catches the fish, he will make a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Cobre. In case his struggle with the marlin should continue for another night, Santiago baits another line in hopes of catching another meal.

The second day of Santiago’s struggle with the marlin wears on. The old man alternately questions and justifies seeking the death of such a noble opponent. As dusk approaches, Santiago’s thoughts turn to baseball. The great DiMaggio, thinks the old man, plays brilliantly despite the pain of a bone spur in his heel. Santiago is not actually sure what a bone spur is, but he is sure he would not be able to bear the pain of one himself. (A bone spur is an outgrowth that projects from the bone.) He wonders if DiMaggio would stay with the marlin. To boost his confidence, the old man recalls the great all-night arm-wrestling match he won as a young man. Having beaten “the great negro from Cienfuegos [a town in Cuba],” Santiago earned the title El Campeón, or “The Champion.”

Just before nightfall, a dolphin takes the second bait Santiago had dropped. The old man hauls it in with one hand and clubs it dead. He saves the meat for the following day. Although Santiago boasts to the marlin that he feels prepared for their impending fight, he is really numb with pain. The stars come out. Santiago considers the stars his friends, as he does the great marlin. He considers himself lucky that his lot in life does not involve hunting anything so great as the stars or the moon. Again, he feels sorry for the marlin, though he is as determined as ever to kill it. The fish will feed many people, Santiago decides, though they are not worthy of the creature’s great dignity. By starlight, still bracing and handling the line, Santiago considers rigging the oars so that the fish will have to pull harder and eventually tire itself out. He fears this strategy would ultimately result in the loss of the fish. He decides to “rest,” which really just means putting down his hands and letting the line go across his back, instead of using his own strength to resist his opponent.

After “resting” for two hours, Santiago chastises himself for not sleeping, and he fears what could happen should his mind become “unclear.” He butchers the dolphin he caught earlier and finds two flying fish in its belly. In the chilling night, he eats half of a fillet of dolphin meat and one of the flying fish. While the marlin is quiet, the old man decides to sleep. He has several dreams: a school of porpoises leaps from and returns to the ocean; he is back in his hut during a storm; and he again dreams of the lions on the beach in Africa.

Analysis

The narrator tells us that Santiago does not mention the hawks that await the little warbler because he thinks the bird will learn about them “soon enough.” Hemingway tempers the grimness of Santiago’s observation with Santiago’s feeling of deep connection with the warbler. He suggests that the world, though designed to bring about death, is a vast, interconnected network of life. Additionally, the warbler’s feeling of exhaustion and its ultimate fate destruction by predators mirror Santiago’s own eventual exhaustion and the marlin’s ravishment by sharks.

The brotherhood between Santiago and the surrounding world extends beyond the warbler. The old man feels an intimate connection to the great fish, as well as to the sea and stars. Santiago constantly pledges his love, respect, and sentiment of brotherhood to the marlin. For this reason, the fish’s death is not portrayed as senselessly tragic. Santiago, and seemingly Hemingway, feel that since death must come in the world, it is preferable that it come at the hands of a worthy opponent. The old man’s magnificence the honor and humility with which he executes his task elevates his struggle to a rarified, even transcendent level.

Skills that involved great displays of strength captured Hemingway’s imagination, and his fiction is filled with fishermen, big-game hunters, bullfighters, prizefighters, and soldiers. Hemingway’s fiction presents a world peopled almost exclusively by men—men who live most successfully in the world through displays of skill. In Hemingway’s world, mere survival is not enough. To elevate oneself above the masses, one must master the rules and rituals by which men are judged. Time and again, we see Santiago displaying the art and the rituals that make him a master of his trade. Only his lines do not drift carelessly in the current; only he braves waters so far from shore.

Rules and rituals dominate the rest of the old man’s life as well. When he is not thinking about fishing, his mind turns to religion or baseball. Because Santiago declares that he is not a religious man, his prayers to the Virgin of Cobre seem less an appeal to a supernatural divinity and more a habit that orders and provides a context for his daily experience. Similarly, Santiago’s worship of Joe DiMaggio, and his constant comparisons between the baseball great and himself, suggest his preference for worlds in which men are measured by a clear set of standards. The great DiMaggio’s reputation is secured by his superlative batting average as surely as Santiago’s will be by an eighteen-foot marlin.

Even though Santiago doesn’t consider himself a religious man, it is during his struggle with the marlin that the book becomes strongly suggestive of a Christian parable. As his struggle intensifies, Santiago begins to seem more and more Christ-like: through his pain, suffering, and eventual defeat, he will transcend his previous incarnation as a failed fisherman. Hemingway achieves this effect by relying on the potent and, to many readers, familiar symbolism identified with Jesus Christ’s life and death. The cuts on the old man’s hands from the fishing line recall the stigmata—the crucifixion wounds of Jesus. Santiago’s isolation, too, evokes that of Christ, who spent forty days alone in the wilderness. Having taken his boat out on the ocean farther than any other fisherman has ever gone, Santiago is beyond even the fringes of society.

Hemingway also unites the old man with marlin through Santiago’s frequent expressions of his feeling of kinship. He thus suggests that the fate of one is the fate of the other. Although they are opponents, Santiago and the marlin are also partners, allies, and, in a sense, doubles. Thus, the following passage, which links the marlin to Christ, implicitly links Santiago to Christ as well:

“Christ, I did not know he was so big.”

“I’ll kill him though,” [Santiago] said. “In all his greatness and his glory.”

Santiago’s expletive (“Christ”) and the laudatory phrase “his greatness and his glory” link the fish’s fate to Christ’s. Because Santiago declares the marlin his “true brother,” he implies that they share a common fate. When, later in the book, sharks attack the marlin’s carcass, thereby attacking Santiago as well, the sense of alliance between the old man and the fish becomes even more explicit.

Source: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/oldman/section3.rhtml

The Old Man and the Sea: DAY 02

Summary

The next morning, before sunrise, the old man goes to Manolin’s house to wake the boy. The two head back to Santiago’s shack, carry the old man’s gear to his boat, and drink coffee from condensed milk cans. Santiago has slept well and is confident about the day’s prospects. He and Manolin part on the beach, wishing each other good luck.

The old man rows steadily away from shore, toward the deep waters of the Gulf Stream. He hears the leaps and whirs of the flying fish, which he considers to be his friends, and thinks with sympathy of the small, frail birds that try to catch them. He loves the sea, though at times it can be cruel. He thinks of the sea as a woman whose wild behavior is beyond her control. The old man drops his baited fishing lines to various measured depths and rows expertly to keep them from drifting with the current. Above all else, he is precise.

The sun comes up. Santiago continues to move away from shore, observing his world as he drifts along. He sees flying fish pursued by dolphins; a diving, circling seabird; Sargasso weed, a type of seaweed found in the Gulf Stream; the distasteful purple Portuguese man-of-war; and the small fish that swim among the jellyfish-like creatures’ filaments. Rowing farther and farther out, Santiago follows the seabird that is hunting for fish, using it as a guide. Soon, one of the old man’s lines goes taut. He pulls up a ten-pound tuna, which, he says out loud, will make a lovely piece of bait. He wonders when he developed the habit of talking to himself but does not remember. He thinks that if the other fishermen heard him talking, they would think him crazy, although he knows he isn’t. Eventually, the old man realizes that he has sailed so far out that he can no longer see the green of the shore.

When the projecting stick that marks the top of the hundred-fathom line dips sharply, Santiago is sure that the fish tugging on the line is of a considerable size, and he prays that it will take the bait. The marlin plays with the bait for a while, and when it does finally take the bait, it starts to move with it, pulling the boat. The old man gives a mighty pull, then another, but he gains nothing. The fish drags the skiff farther into the sea. No land at all is visible to Santiago now.

All day the fish pulls the boat as the old man braces the line with his back and holds it taut in his hands, ready to give more line if necessary. The struggle goes on all night, as the fish continues to pull the boat. The glow given off by the lights of Havana gradually fades, signifying that the boat is the farthest from shore it has been so far. Over and over, the old man wishes he had the boy with him. When he sees two porpoises playing in the water, Santiago begins to pity his quarry and consider it a brother. He thinks back to the time that he caught one of a pair of marlin: the male fish let the female take the bait, then he stayed by the boat, as though in mourning. Although the memory makes him sad, Santiago’s determination is unchecked: as the marlin swims out, the old man goes “beyond all people in the world” to find him.

The sun rises and the fish has not tired, though it is now swimming in shallower waters. The old man cannot increase the tension on the line, because if it is too taut it will break and the fish will get away. Also, if the hook makes too big a cut in the fish, the fish may get away from it. Santiago hopes that the fish will jump, because its air sacs would fill and prevent the fish from going too deep into the water, which would make it easier to pull out. A yellow weed attaches to the line, helping to slow the fish. Santiago can do nothing but hold on. He pledges his love and respect to the fish, but he nevertheless promises that he will kill his opponent before the day ends.

Analysis

As Santiago sets out on the eighty-fifth day, the reader witnesses the qualities that earn him Manolin’s praise and dedication. The old man is an expert seaman, able to read the sea, sky, and their respective creatures like books that tell him what he needs to know. The flying fish, for instance, signal the arrival of dolphins, while, in Santiago’s experience, the magnificent tug on the line can mean only one thing: a marlin—a type of large game fish that weighs hundreds of pounds. Unlike the fishermen he passes on his way into the deep waters of the gulf, Santiago exercises an unparalleled precision when fishing. He keeps his lines perfectly straight instead of letting them drift as the other fishermen do, which means that he always knows exactly how deep they are. Santiago’s focus, his strength and resolve in the face of tremendous obstacles, as well as the sheer artistry with which he executes his tasks, mark him as a hero.

Santiago conforms to the model of the classical hero in two important respects. First, he displays a rare determination to understand the universe, as is evident when he meditates that the sea is beautiful and benevolent, but also so cruel that the birds who rely on the sea’s bounty are too delicate for it. Second, the old man possesses a tragic flaw that will lead to his downfall: pride. Santiago’s pride carries him far, not only metaphorically but literally—beyond his fellow fishermen into beautiful but, in the end, terribly cruel waters. As in classical epics, the most important struggle in Hemingway’s novella is a moral one. The fish itself is of secondary importance, for it is merely a trophy, a material prize.

Some critics have taken issue with Hemingway’s depiction of the old man because it betrays the very tenets of fiction that the author demanded (see “Hemingway’s Style”). Hemingway was, first and foremost, a proponent of realism. He wished to strip literature of its pretense and ornamentation, and he built a reputation as a journalistic writer who prized hard facts above all else. Metaphysical meditations and lofty philosophizing held little interest for Hemingway when compared to the details of daily life. As he states in A Farewell to Arms, “Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the number of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.” But several critics have charged Hemingway with a failure to render his old man or, for that matter, the sea realistically. Hemingway has forged particular details that simply are not true. For example, as critic Robert P. Weeks points out, the poisonous Portuguese man-of-war that follows Santiago’s boat would not appear in the waters off of Cuba for another six months. A more significant, less petty objection is the charge that Hemingway reduces Santiago to an unrealistic archetype of goodness and purity, while the surrounding world is marked by man’s romance and brotherhood with the sea and its many creatures.

Many critics believe that Hemingway was striking out into new literary territory with The Old Man and the Sea. America’s foremost proponent of realism seemed to be moving toward something as highly symbolic as parable. Hemingway, however, disagreed. The philosophy that governed his writing of the novella was the same one that shaped his earlier novels. In a 1958 interview with The Paris Review, Hemingway spoke about The Old Man and the Sea:

Anyway, to skip how [the writing] is done, I had unbelievable luck this time and could convey the [old man’s] experience completely and have it be one that no one had ever conveyed. The luck was that I had a good man and a good boy and lately writers have forgotten there are still such things.

To Hemingway, Santiago and Manolin were as true to the real world as protagonists like Frederic Henry of A Farewell to Armsor Jake Barnes of The Sun Also Rises.

The old man’s memory of hooking the female marlin of a male-female pair exemplifies Hemingway’s vision of a world in which women have no real place even the picture of Santiago’s wife no longer remains on his wall. Men are the central focus of most of Hemingway’s writing and certainly of The Old Man and the Sea. It is no coincidence that Santiago is convinced that his greatest adversary is, as he continually notes, a male, a fact that he could not possibly ascertain before even seeing the fish.

Source: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/oldman/section2.rhtml

The Old Man and The Sea: DAY 01

Summary

Santiago, an old fisherman, has gone eighty-four days without catching a fish. For the first forty days, a boy named Manolin had fished with him, but Manolin’s parents, who call Santiagosalao, or “the worst form of unlucky,” forced Manolin to leave him in order to work in a more prosperous boat. The old man is wrinkled, splotched, and scarred from handling heavy fish on cords, but his eyes, which are the color of the sea, remain “cheerful and undefeated.”

Having made some money with the successful fishermen, the boy offers to return to Santiago’s skiff, reminding him of their previous eighty-seven-day run of bad luck, which culminated in their catching big fish every day for three weeks. He talks with the old man as they haul in Santiago’s fishing gear and laments that he was forced to obey his father, who lacks faith and, as a result, made him switch boats. The pair stops for a beer at a terrace café, where fishermen make fun of Santiago. The old man does not mind. Santiago and Manolin reminisce about the many years the two of them fished together, and the boy begs the old man to let him provide fresh bait fish for him. The old man accepts the gift with humility. Santiago announces his plans to go “far out” in the sea the following day.

Manolin and Santiago haul the gear to the old man’s shack, which is furnished with nothing more than the barest necessities: a bed, a table and chair, and a place to cook. On the wall are two pictures: one of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and one of the Virgin of Cobre, the patroness of Cuba. The old man has taken down the photograph of his wife, which made him feel “too lonely.” The two go through their usual dinner ritual, in which the boy asks Santiago what he is going to eat, and the old man replies, “yellow rice with fish,” and then offers some to the boy. The boy declines, and his offer to start the old man’s fire is rejected. In reality, there is no food.

Excited to read the baseball scores, Santiago pulls out a newspaper, which he says was given to him by Perico at the bodega. Manolin goes to get the bait fish and returns with some dinner as well, a gift from Martin, the café owner. The old man is moved by Martin’s thoughtfulness and promises to repay the kindness. Manolin and Santiago discuss baseball. Santiago is a huge admirer of “the great DiMaggio,” whose father was a fisherman. After discussing with Santiago the greatest ballplayers and the greatest baseball managers, the boy declares that Santiago is the greatest fisherman: “There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is only you.” Finally, the boy leaves, and the old man goes to sleep. He dreams his sweet, recurring dream, of lions playing on the white beaches of Africa, a scene he saw from his ship when he was a very young man.

Analysis

The opening pages of the book establish Santiago’s character and set the scene for the action to follow. Even though he loves Manolin and is loved dearly by the boy, the old man lives as an outsider. The greeting he receives from the fishermen, most of whom mock him for his fruitless voyages to sea, shows Santiago to be an alienated, almost ostracized figure. Such an alienated position is characteristic of Hemingway’s heroes, whose greatest achievements depend, in large part, upon their isolation. In Hemingway’s works, it is only once a man is removed from the numbing and false confines of modern society that he can confront the larger, universal truths that govern him. In A Farewell to Arms, for instance, only after Frederic Henry abandons his post in the army and lives in seclusion is he able to learn the dismal lesson that death renders meaningless such notions as honor, glory, and love. Yet, although Hemingway’s message in The Old Man and the Sea is tragic in many respects, the story of Santiago and the destruction of his greatest catch is far from dismal. Unlike Frederic, Santiago is not defeated by his enlightenment. The narrator emphasizes Santiago’s perseverance in the opening pages, mentioning that the old man’s eyes are still “cheerful and undefeated” after suffering nearly three months without a single catch. And, although Santiago’s struggle will bring about defeat—the great marlin will be devoured by sharks—Santiago will emerge as a victor. As he tells the boy, in order for this to happen, he must venture far out, farther than the other fishermen are willing to go.

In Hemingway’s narrative, Santiago is elevated above the normal stature of a protagonist, assuming near-mythical proportions. He belongs to a tradition of literary heroes whose superior qualities necessitate their distance from ordinary humans and endeavors. Because Manolin constantly expresses his devotion to, reverence for, and trust of Santiago, he establishes his mentor as a figure of significant moral and professional stature, despite the difficulties of the past eighty-four days. While other young fishermen make fun of the old man, Manolin knows Santiago’s true worth and the extent of Santiago’s knowledge. In the old man, Hemingway provides the reader with a model of good, simple living: Santiago transcends the evils of the world—hunger, poverty, the contempt of his fellow men—by enduring them.

In these first few scenes, Hemingway introduces several issues and images that will recur throughout the book. The first is the question of Santiago’s endurance. The descriptions of his crude hut, almost nonexistent eating habits, and emaciated body force the reader to question the old man’s physical capacities. How could Santiago, who subsists on occasional handouts from kind café owners or, worse, imaginary meals, wage the terrific battle with the great marlin that the novel recounts? As the book progresses, we see that the question is irrelevant. Although Santiago’s battle is played out in physical terms, the stakes are decidedly spiritual.

This section also introduces two important symbols: the lions playing on the beaches of Africa and baseball’s immortal Joe DiMaggio. Throughout his trial at sea, Santiago’s thoughts will return to DiMaggio, for to him the baseball player represents a kind of triumphant survival. After suffering a bone spur in his heel, DiMaggio returned to baseball to become, in the eyes of many, the greatest player of all time. The lions are a more enigmatic symbol. The narrator says that they are Santiago’s only remaining dream. When he sleeps, he no longer envisions storms or women or fish, but only the “young cats in the dusk,” which “he love[s] . . . as he love[s] the boy.” Because the image of the lions has stayed with Santiago since his boyhood, the lions connect the end of the old man’s life with the beginning, giving his existence a kind of circularity. Like Santiago, the lions are hunters at the core of their being. The fact that Santiago dreams of the lions at play rather than on the hunt indicates that his dream is a break—albeit a temporary one—from the vicious order of the natural world.

Source: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/oldman/section1.rhtml

Animal Farm: Chapter X - Analysis

Orwell fast-forwards to a time when Animal Farm has undergone a great deal of turnover. Only a few animals that remember the Rebellion remain, and their memories of it are faint. Napoleon has rewritten the animals’ history to the extent that they feel they no longer have one. He has also manipulated language to the extent that it is meaningless. We see this reflected in the maxim, “All animals are equal / But some animals are more equal than others.” The concept of “more equal” is mathematically impossible, but the animals are too disillusioned and brainwashed to notice. In all the years since the Rebellion, not a single animal has gotten the rewards that he was promised or that was experienced so briefly in the days immediately following the Rebellion. In history, Chapter X corresponds to a time somewhere in the distant future, beyond the realm of Orwell’s own experience. It is, therefore, the manifestation of his pessimistic conjectures about the future of totalitarianism. In this chapter, Orwell slowly and firmly crushes our hopes along with the animals’. In the end, the pigs have all the tangible fruits of Animal Farm’s labor while the animals are left with only empty promises. The windmill, the cause for which countless animals labored and died, has been diverted from its original purpose of supplying electricity. Not even Clover and Benjamin, who are by this time very old, have been allowed to retire. While wearing clothing, smoking pipes, and eating sugar, Napoleon still has the nerve to tell the animals, “The truest happiness … [lies] in working hard and living frugally” (129). It is a harrowing, dystopic future.

In the pessimistic vein for which he became known, Orwell imagines a future in which not only the Soviet Union, but also the Allies, become totalitarian. We see this reflected in Pilkington’s speech at the banquet. He not only agrees to collaborate with Napoleon, but vows to emulate Napoleon’s harsh standards of labor and living on his own farm. In his own toast, Napoleon seals the door on Animal Farm’s history and breaks the last ties with its original tenets. He changes the farm’s name back to “Manor Farm,” as though the trials, triumphs, and abuses of the past many years never happened. It is clear that he intends to erase the memory of Animal Farm from history. Stalin and Hitler were both known to do this in educating the youth in their countries. Most likely, the textbooks in Napoleon’s schoolhouse will severely skew the truth about Animal Farm, if they mention the name “Animal Farm” at all. Napoleon breaks the final tie with Major when he denies knowing why the animals march past his skull in ceremonious fashion. He is erasing knowledge not just of the ideas that Major stood for, but also all the things he himself authored.

The poker game is multiply symbolic. First, it represents the carelessness with which totalitarian leaders treat their people. The animals are like cards in the gambler’s hands, subject to whim and chance. When Napoleon and Pilkington fight over the Ace of Spades (which proves that at least one of them had a card up his sleeve), they foreshadow the international disagreements and struggles that are sure to follow the temporary postwar peace. In this symbolic meaning, Orwell foreshadows the Cold War even though it did not begin in earnest until after the book was published. Pigs and humans are equals at the table, more or less, and rivals once the game is over.

Orwell demonstrates the fact that oppression is cyclical and the oppressed becomes the oppressor when given the chance. By the novel’s end, the pigs are indistinguishable from the humans not only in behavior but also in appearance. Their transformation is complete when they adopt two-legged walking. They treat the animals in the autocratic manner of Jones. In this sense, the story has come full circle.

The future Orwell creates for Animal Farm does not correspond neatly with Imperial Russia. Before the Rebellion, the animals lived under Jones’s total control but had the advantage, the bliss, of ignorance. Now they are living under Napoleon’s total control, having been enlightened to the possibility of freedom and, it seems, still under the impression that they are free but no longer understanding what true freedom would be. This is consistent with Orwell’s belief that 20th-century autocrats such as Hitler and Stalin were of a new and more dangerous kind than the dictators of the past.

Animal Farm is a warning about autocrats who take over socialist ideals for their own aggrandizement. Is there any chance for socialism if human nature is such that the lust for greed and power brings forth leaders who take control and betray its ideals, over against passive and uneducated populations? The capitalist, democratic alternative is to channel that lust into productive work and to limit the power of government to control the freedoms of the people. This alternative creates or aggravates inequalities—one might say that there will always be pigs, dogs, horses, cats, and the rest—but is far preferable to totalitarian control. The challenge for Orwell or for anyone who promotes socialist ideals is to find a practical way to circumvent the abuses that the pigs of Animal Farm so easily commit. But since the novel is a reflection of the challenges of the 1940s rather than a political treatise, Orwell has done quite enough in demonstrating, clearly and horrifyingly, the nature and scope of the challenges to be faced.

Source: http://www.gradesaver.com/animal-farm/study-guide/section10/

Animal Farm: Chapter IX - Analysis

World War II devastated not only the Soviet Union’s populace but also its economy. Agriculture and factory production, which the people had worked so tirelessly to fortify in previous decades, were left in shambles. In Animal Farm, the windmill represents the Soviet people’s economic progress. Frederick and his men ruin the windmill in one fell swoop just as the Nazis destroyed the Soviet Union’s hard-earned progress. In the Five Year Plans after World War II, Stalin had no choice but to focus on recouping the Soviet Union’s losses. In the same vein, Napoleon rededicates the animals to the windmill’s construction. Boxer’s attitude after the war represents the toll that the war took on the Soviet people’s morale. Still, they managed to rally just as Boxer does, despite even harsher shortages than ever. Despite harsh conditions for the rest of the animals, the pigs are flourishing. 

Napoleon has managed to parent thirty-one new pigs, which he plans to make disciples of his theories by building a schoolhouse. (This may be a reference to the Thirty Tyrants of ancient Greece, only a little worse.) As usual, Napoleon makes the animals complicit in their own oppression, this time by forcing them to build the schoolhouse on top of their reconstructive and regular workload. Napoleon’s abuses become even more blatant and more reminiscent of Jones’s behavior when he awards pigs the right of way on the path. The other animals must stand aside in deference to the pigs, which is the sort of behavior a peasant under the feudal system would have to display in his master’s presence. The pigs even assume Mollie’s two favorite habits: eating sugar and wearing ribbons in their tails. If we recall that Mollie represents the imperial elite, we can see how far Animal Farm has regressed.

By making Napoleon’s abuses so blatant, Orwell exposes the fact that stratification is inevitable in the hands of corrupt leaders and that power and greed are cyclical. The pigs begin the book by carrying out Old Major’s ideals of a working-class rebellion just as the Bolsheviks overthrew the czar with Marxism-Leninism in mind. Then, just as Stalin and the Soviet elite came to resemble the imperialists they so despised, Napoleon and the pigs take on human characteristics. This—emulating humans—is the very thing against which Major warned the animals in his meeting. Readers are progressively horrified by the new outrages and betrayals committed by the pigs.

Orwell focuses on propaganda again in Chapter IX. This time he focuses less on the manipulative nature of propaganda and more on its grandeur. Napoleon’s Spontaneous Demonstrations are especially pompous and gay, with a cockerel marching in front of the procession. The Spontaneous Demonstrations also involve the animals directly in the propaganda machine. More than singing songs or chanting maxims, they are now marching around the farm to celebrate Animal Farm’s glory. The gun, originally intended to solemnly mark the anniversaries of battles, is now used liberally to stir the animals’ loyalties. (See the Related Links for a clip from a Soviet propaganda film, keeping the Spontaneous Demonstrations in mind.) Further proving their submission, the animals find the increase in propaganda uplifting: “But if there were hardships to be borne, they were partly offset by the fact that life nowadays had a greater dignity than it had had before. There were more songs, more speeches, more processions … They found it comforting to be reminded that all the work they did was for their own benefit. … They were able to forget that their bellies were empty, at least part of the time” (117-118). Orwell comes close to sympathy for the animals in this passage, where he seems to suggest that in addition to the animals’ gullibility, they have a desperate need to be uplifted, even by means as false and ridiculous as the Spontaneous Demonstrations. Moses’ return also supplies them with much-needed inspiration, although the pigs are wary of his competing influence.

Orwell breaks such reverie with the story of Boxer’s illness and murder. By this point, Orwell has repeated the pigs’ abuses so many times that the reader may be as desperate as the animals for some relief. But Orwell wastes no time in reminding us that propaganda is just the totalitarian government’s machine of deception. Napoleon feels no affinity for Boxer, despite that animal’s years of tireless work on Animal Farm’s behalf. This is because Napoleon feels entitled to the animals’ hard work just as Stalin was more concerned with his own goals than with his people’s well being. Napoleon sends Boxer off to the slaughter for profit without seeming to have any second thoughts except for finding a way to explain the betrayal to the other animals. Adding insult to injury, he uses Boxer’s murder as an opportunity for more propaganda, having Squealer relate to the animals Boxer’s supposed patriotic last words. Then he and the pigs celebrate their latest feat of deception and violence by drinking the case of whisky. While the pigs are becoming more like humans, they are becoming the kind of humans whom others would call animals for their cruelty and irrationality.

Source: http://www.gradesaver.com/animal-farm/study-guide/section9/

Animal Farm: Chapter VIII - Analysis

Napoleon’s revisionism continues with the alterations of the commandments. Worst of all is the reversal from “No animal shall kill any other animal” to “No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.” This particular revision may strike a particularly deep chord with readers on the parallel between the original Commandment and the Biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” On that note, we should notice that by this point,Moses is absent from Animal Farm along with the morality he represents and his vision of Sugarcandy Mountain, which could help the animals through their terror. Napoleon adds to his array of propaganda the reading of optimistic statistics. Stalin’s Five Year Plans were successful, especially considering how much catching up Russia had to do, but they did not meet up to his exceptionally high projections. Maintaining appearances was deemed vital to the regime’s international reputation.

At this point, Napoleon can trust that his terrorist tactics have made the animals submissive. They cannot believe in their own safety, so they embrace any good news they can get, and good news arrives to them almost exclusively in the form of propaganda. They have lost the ability to judge their success or their quality of life because they cannot remember what life was like before or just after the Rebellion. The animals have also become immune to the type of outrage that their leaders’ deceit might arouse in someone with a democratic education and mindset. Even when they catch Squealer in the act of revising the Seven Commandments, they are too subdued to protest. The animals have taken on Benjamin’s quality of apathy, not because they are naturally apathetic like him, but because Napoleon has molded and terrorized them to be that way. In the same way, the Soviet populace adjusted to Stalin’s tactics of fear and manipulation. Powerless to change anything, they grew to accept it. In psychology this might be called a denial, a defense mechanism, or a coping mechanism. Again, the nobles, who tended to have better educations than the working class, had fled.

As the animals are forced to live an increasingly restricted lifestyle, Napoleon and the pigs are continually awarding themselves privileges and taking an unfair share of the rations. Historically, this corresponds to Stalin’s privileging of the Communist elite. While the typical Soviet citizen worked hard and gained little, the typical member of the Communist elite had access to everything from fancy consumer goods to summer houses in the country. During the 1930s, it became increasingly difficult for people to join the ranks of the Communist elite. Orwell reflects this in Animal Farm, where there is absolutely no social mobility. Pigs alone have access to privileges such as sleeping in beds and drinking alcohol. We should recall that the seeds of this extreme class stratification, contrary to the tenets of Animalism and to Marxism-Leninism, began very early on when the pigs appropriated the milk supply. Orwell introduces the pigs’ privileges early and increases them gradually to show how insidious and therefore successful Stalin’s policies could be. People can be subjugated severely when the subjugation is enacted by degrees.

The events of Chapter VIII cover the historical events of: Hiter’s ascension to power in Germany, the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, and Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. Napoleon continues to be suspicious of Frederick just as Stalin kept one eye open as Hitler ascended to power in Germany. The stories of animal torture on Frederick’s farm are meant to symbolize the reports of atrocities coming out of Nazi Germany. The rumors are not substantiated in Animal Farm, presumably because the truth about the scale and severity of Hitler’s atrocities did not emerge fully until after World War II. Napoleon’s tightening leash on Animal Farm’s consciousness is reflected in his interactions with the messenger pigeons. The pigeons, which were formerly his mouthpieces, are now forbidden from flying over the neighboring farms. Presumably, Napoleon does not want them to undermine his ever-changing opinions about Frederick and Pilkington.

In 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a non-aggression pact that promised neutrality and cooperation between the two nations. In Animal Farm, Napoleon’s trade agreement with Frederick symbolizes this pact. Napoleon does not trust Frederick completely, as shown in his unwillingness to accept a check. In the same way Stalin was wary of Hitler and his goals, perhaps seeing some of his own ruthlessness and ambition in Hitler’s eyes. Napoleon’s distrust of Frederick soon turns out to be true, just as Stalin was right not to trust Hitler completely. Hitler’s forces invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, an event that Orwell mirrors in Frederick’s attack on Animal Farm. He summarizes the incredible damage that the Nazis did before their defeat in the destruction of the windmill.

Pilkington’s neutrality during the conflict and his not-so-neutral message, “Serves you right,” satirize the Allies’ initial hesitance to respond during World War II. World War II devastated the Soviet population, which lost over twenty million people. Orwell reflects the magnitude of the Soviet Union’s loss in Boxer’s flagging enthusiasm. Even he, the bastion of positive thinking, finds it difficult to recoup after the Battle of the Windmill. With Animal Farm so isolationist and duplicitous toward the human world (compare modern-day North Korea), it is no wonder that it faces withering shortages, demoralization, and tyranny within and hostility everywhere without.

Source: http://www.gradesaver.com/animal-farm/study-guide/section8/

Animal Farm; Chapter VII - Analysis

In Chapter VII, Orwell focuses again on the gap between the tirelessness of the animals’ efforts and the benefits they receive. We discussed earlier that, because Stalin focused more on heavy industry than on consumer products, the Soviet people faced shortages of the things they needed the most. Because of chronic shortages in the Soviet Union, there arose the cliché of standing in line for most anything one wanted, including food and toilet paper. When one wanted to purchase a bigger item, such as a car, one was put on the end of a seemingly interminable list. On a side note, Stalin’s focus on heavy industry corresponded with his name—meaning steel—which he chose for himself (Stalin was born with the much more ethnically-specific surname Dzhugashivili).

Napoleon begins to shelter himself from public scrutiny and makes Squealer and the dogs do his dirty work. This corresponds with Stalin’s habit of being a figure in the shadows. Stalin gave orders from the comfort of his office, while the propagandists and secret police meted out his demands and punishments. The negotiations over the timber represent Stalin’s export of the products of heavy industry. Napoleon’s waffling between Pilkington and Frederick also mirrors Stalin’s caution in dealing with foreign nations.

Meanwhile, in order to distract the animals from their hardships and frustrations, Napoleon increases the amount of propaganda on Animal Farm. Squealer, his agent as usual, cultivates the idea that Snowball is lurking on the perimeter of Animal Farm and plotting mischief against the animals. Napoleon also makes a personal and very public show of claiming to smell Snowball’s scent all around the farm. By giving the impression that Snowball is everywhere, Napoleon at ones makes Snowball, a concrete entity, into a nebulous threat and creates an atmosphere of almost palpable fear: “The animals were thoroughly frightened. It seemed to them as though Snowball were some kind of invisible influence, pervading the air about them and menacing them with all kinds of dangers” (89). By personally investigating Snowball’s whereabouts, Napoleon keeps himself tied to the greater good in the public’s eyes. At once, they feel frightened and also cared for, but they attribute the former feeling to Snowball and the latter to Napoleon.

Soon enough, Napoleon turns Snowball from an outside threat into a pervasive internal threat. Boxer unwittingly gives Squealer the idea when he protests Squealer’s revision of Snowball’s heroism. Only after Boxer challenges him does Squealer first warn the animals that Snowball’s secret agents have infiltrated their ranks. Here, Orwell satirizes Stalin’s intensification of fear tactics. In Stalin’s Soviet Union, people of every gender, age, and profession were suspected of treachery. Many were forced to confess to things they did not do, all in the name of keeping the public subdued by fear. At this point, we should recall that the Red Terror, the first organized attempt to stamp out anti-Communist sentiment in the Soviet Union, was Lenin’s prerogative. Therefore it predated Trotsky and Stalin’s debates as well as Trotsky’s expulsion. It stands to reason that Orwell skips over the Red Terror in order to assign all terrorist tactics to Napoleon (as opposed to including Snowball). Orwell’s experiences in the Spanish Civil War, in which he fought on the side of Trotskyists, may have informed this omission as well.

In any case, Napoleon’s execution assembly represents the Moscow Trials and the Great Purge, Stalin’s widespread campaign to suppress any and all dissent in the Soviet Union. Indeed, this was a far cry from the cooperation and good cheer with which the Animalism revolution began. In the Soviet Union, it began as a “cleansing” of the Communist Party and was expanded to one of the entire, vast Soviet population, among which tens of millions were killed or deported. In the Moscow Trials of 1936-1938, Stalin incriminated many party leaders, charging them with crimes ranging from conspiracy to attempted assassination. The accused gave their confessions, seemingly freely in front of a general assembly, just as Napoleon’s accused give theirs in front of all the other animals. This gave lookers-on a reason to believe that the traitors were rightfully accused, another belief we see repeated in Animal Farm. As Orwell suggests in the text, Stalin (and Napoleon) staged the confessions by using violence and fear tactics to coerce the accused. Witnesses at the trials also gave scripted testimony in order to force guilt upon the accused. Stalin had the accused traitors executed (or, if they were lucky, expelled) just as Napoleon has the dogs rip out the throats of the supposed traitors. Despite the publicity of the Moscow Trials, Stalin often had torture and executions performed in secrecy. Orwell makes Napoleon’s purge not only public but especially cruel in order to shed light on the magnitude and barbarism of Stalin’s purges. It is one thing to hear of an execution by humans against humans for political reasons, quite another to contemplate the image of fierce dogs tearing out traitors’ throats.

The Soviet population became terrified of execution and internment in forced labor camps called Gulags. In the novel, the animals’ immediate response to the purge is fear and disillusionment. Shaken, Clover and the other animals try to take comfort in “Beasts of England”—they know that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong but cannot quite describe what or how. They want to focus on the positive ideas of freedom and abundance. Squealer shatters even that comfort when he announces that the song is obsolete and therefore forbidden. We can assume that the real reason Napoleon abolishes it is that, since the animals have committed it to memory, he cannot revise it like the Seven Commandments. Therefore, he forces the animals to forget it, along with the tenets of their beloved Animalism, to be replaced with a new song and new values that are looking more and more like the values under which Mr. Jones ran the farm.

Source: http://www.gradesaver.com/animal-farm/study-guide/section7/

Animal Farm: Chapter VI - Analysis

In Chapter VI, the animals begin working tirelessly to complete the windmill. In this case, we can see the windmill as the first of Stalin’s Five Year Plans. The Five Year Plans had the same aim as Lenin’s New Economic Policy, which was to stimulate Russian industry and help bring it into the 20th century. Unlike the NEP, which left some control of industry in the people’s hands, Stalin’s Five Year Plans brought Russian industry under complete government control. Orwell mirrors this pattern in Napoleon’s tightening of the reigns on the animal workforce. Napoleon’s supposedly “voluntary” but actually compulsory Sunday labor sets him even farther apart from Snowball, who advocated a shorter workweek.

This episode also reflects Stalin’s reliance on tactics of deception. Although Stalin was clear with industry leaders about the goals of the Five Year Plans, he continued manipulating the public to foster increased—albeit successful—labor. As in history, the animals of Animal Farm are able to achieve great productivity but do not benefit personally from their efforts. They suffer shortages because for all their work, the windmill (like the heavy industry on which Stalin focused Soviet efforts) cannot yet provide them with energy, much less the basic things they need.

Unlike Napoleon, who opens trade relations with neighboring farms, Stalin was conservative about foreign trade. Rather than representing a specific event in history, Napoleon’s decision to conduct business with other farms is another opportunity for Orwell to point out Stalin’s hypocrisy and revisionism by means of the pigs’ rejection of the original principles of the Rebellion. The very basis for Animalism is the idea that humans are the enemy and not to be trusted—“four legs good, two legs bad.” By negotiating with humans, Napoleon undermines Animalism completely at the same time he is reminding the animals that the windmill should be their first priority. By having Napoleon show such disregard for Animalism’s tenets, Orwell suggests that Stalin was more a proponent of his personal interests than he was of the cause of Communism. Like Napoleon, Stalin did not seem to believe in the greater good for which he forced his people to work so tirelessly.

Orwell mirrors Stalin’s caution in dealing with foreign nations in Napoleon’s procurement of an intermediary, Mr. Whymper. Additionally, Whymper represents those countries that traded with the Soviet Union while turning a blind eye to Stalin’s abuses. Whymper (whose name suggests whimpering or docility) works purely for profit and never interferes in Animal Farm’s affairs.

Orwell also expands his critique of Stalin’s revisionist propaganda. The pigs break another of the Seven Commandments when they begin living in the farmhouse and sleeping in beds. Clover and Muriel investigate, only to discover that the commandment has been changed to suit the pigs’ desires. Through his smooth talking, Squealer convinces Clover and Muriel that the commandment has always concerned the use of sheets and not beds. In this revision, the allegory serves Orwell particularly well. Stalin and his propagandists plastered the Soviet Union with propaganda in the form of posters, songs, art, and countless other media. Squealer’s version of this pattern is to continually re-paint the Seven Commandments to reflect Napoleon’s changes in policy. Orwell humorously suggests a Soviet agent going around the Soviet Union, personally scratching out and rewriting the slogans on posters. The point is that the propaganda changes to suit those in power and to keep a controlled acquiescence among the rest.

Chapter VI also continues Orwell’s critique of the tactic of intimidation. When Clover and Muriel question the Seven Commandments’ accuracy, Squealer threatens them (as usual) with Jones’s return. In this chapter, Napoleon’s fear tactics culminate with the windmill’s destruction. Though natural forces are to blame, Napoleon blames the disaster on Snowball in the same way Stalin considered Trotsky a threat even in exile. In the novel, Napoleon sentences Snowball to death, but we never find out whether his orders are carried out, or if Snowball is even still alive at the time of his sentencing. In history, Stalin eventually did have Trotsky assassinated by a Soviet agent in 1940. Whether Snowball is a true threat to Animal Farm or not, Napoleon makes sure the animals believe Snowball is. In this sense, Snowball represents the nebulous foreign threat of which Stalin kept his people wary. There are now two terrorist enemies to fear, Mr. Jones (even if he has left town, other men remain to be afraid of) and Snowball.

Orwell makes the connection between fear tactics and economic strategy very clear at the end of Chapter VI. Napoleon moves directly from accusing Snowball of destroying the windmill to urging the animals, “Forward, comrades! Long live the windmill! Long live Animal Farm” (83). Napoleon remains a leader the animals are willing to follow—they cannot see another choice, anyway, especially with Mr. Jones and Snowball cast as enemies—but the legitimacy of Napoleon’s authority is becoming more and more suspect to the reader.

Source: http://www.gradesaver.com/animal-farm/study-guide/section6/

Animal Farm: Chapter V - Analysis

In Chapter IV, we saw conflicting evidence concerning the relationship between the Battle of the Cowshed and the historical October Revolution. Mollie’s desertion in the beginning of Chapter V makes a case for the Battle of the Cowshed’s representing the October Revolution. Once both parts of the Russian Revolution were completed (insofar as these were two touchstones of the revolution), Lenin could begin making major social and economic changes. Again, many improvements have already been instated on Animal Farm by the time of the Battle of the Cowshed, which would be too early for consistency with history—but not necessarily out of order for Marxist theory. If the trend toward collectivization after the Rebellion ruffled Mollie, the second revolutionary struggle, the Battle of the Cowshed, incites her to action. Just as many of Russia’s former elite emigrated after the Russian Revolution because they refused to live under Communism, Mollie “emigrates” in order to avoid living under Animalism. The fact that Mollie leaves only after the Battle of the Cowshed supports its representing the October Revolution.

After the Battle of the Cowshed, the pigs award themselves the task or “burden” of making all policy decisions. This fact also supports the idea that the Battle of the Cowshed represents the October Revolution because, although the Seven Commandments are already in place, the pigs tighten their control over the populace just as the Bolsheviks did once the Revolution was complete. In general, Chapter V corresponds to the mid-to-late 1920s, when Trotsky and Stalin’s power struggle came to a head. Historically, Trotsky was a brilliant orator, so he was good at inspiring the public on a large scale. Orwell mirrors this in the faction called “Vote for Napoleon and the three-day week.” However, Stalin easily outdid Trotsky in his ability to garner not just a wash of support, but deep-seated and influential support. Snowball may dominate the stage at meetings, but Napoleon gets the sheep to heckle Snowball by interrupting his speeches by chanting, “Four legs good, two legs bad!” In their heckling, the sheep represent those of Stalin’s supporters who took to disrupting Trotsky’s speeches at Party meetings.

Orwell does not have a literary reason to follow the details of history and character because he is doing much more than retell a story in his own way; he chooses his details and his symbols in order to make his own points. The windmill is at the center of Snowball’s and Napoleon’s fiercest debate. Rather than representing a specific point of debate between Trotsky and Stalin, the windmill symbolizes Soviet industry, both agricultural and factory. The narrator tells us that, up until the building of the windmill, Manor Farm has been stuck in the past. It is not technologically advanced, though other farms are. This mirrors the fact that, coming into the Soviet Era, Russia’s agriculture and city industry lagged behind other civilized countries. All of the three original Soviet leaders, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin, recognized the need for industrial progress and had varying ideas about how to pursue it. In his conception and promotion of the windmill, Snowball can be seen to take a turn as Lenin. Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP) was an attempt to stimulate Russian productivity, one that Stalin ceased and replaced with his own “windmills,” the Five Year Plans. On a broader scale, the windmill represents the abstract Soviet cause toward the common good.

Over the years, the animals will work tirelessly to build the windmill, sacrificing everything from their rest days to their rations in order that it might be completed. In the same way, Soviet citizens labored for an abstract “common good,” the fruits of which they never saw. Each time the windmill is destroyed, Napoleon gives the animals new hope that, next time around, they will build it and reap its benefits. In the same way, Stalin kept the Soviet people trained on a good that, time after time, slipped from their grasp.

In Chapter V, Orwell also brings up the central difference between Trotskyism and Stalinism. As we have discussed previously, Trotsky advocated the extension of the Revolution on an international scale. In contrast, Stalin advanced the idea of Socialism in One Country, in which he stated that, considering the failure of communism in other nations, the Soviet Union should focus its energy internally. Stalin’s Socialism in One Country was a revision of Marxism-Leninism. Orwell mirrors these events in Snowball’s and Napoleon’s debate over how best to protect Animal Farm against another human attack. Snowball wants to send messengers to spread the message of the Rebellion. Napoleon wants to stockpile weapons and train the animals to use them. Just as Stalin revised Marxism-Leninism with Socialism in One Country, Napoleon has begun to hijack Animalism to serve his own ideals.

In 1929, Stalin expelled Trotsky from the Soviet Union. In a similar move, Napoleon ousts Snowball from Animal Farm. Snowball’s rabble-rousing cannot protect him against Napoleon’s dogs, just as Trotsky’s oration skills were no match for the power that Stalin was slowly and steadily cultivating. The revelation of the attack dogs is the first sign of the new violence between animals on Animal Farm. It is a kind of coup.

Under Napoleon, as under Stalin, propaganda takes on a much-expanded and more powerful role. Specifically, Squealer comes to represent Stalin’s revisionist propaganda machine. No sooner than Snowball is gone, Squealer is already questioning Snowball’s bravery in the Battle of the Cowshed. Notably, Squealer claims that the windmill was Napoleon’s idea all along. Whether this is true or not, it certainly seems like revisionist history.

With the exhumation of old Major’s skull, Orwell makes the point that propaganda is often effective not simply for its message but for the atmosphere of domination it creates. Napoleon is changing Major’s ideas in order to create his own personal regime in the same way that Stalin changed Marxism-Leninism. Still, he makes the animals march past Major’s skull as though they are still adhering to the old boar’s exhortations.

Source: http://www.gradesaver.com/animal-farm/study-guide/section5/

Animal Farm: Chapter IV - Analysis

The first part of Chapter IV mirrors the international reaction to the young Soviet Union. For centuries, other nations had been able to write off Russia as a backwards and disorganized country, despite the size of its territory and population. There had been socialist uprisings elsewhere, and efforts like the French Revolution had not brought the workers’ utopia that had been dreamed of. But after the Russian Revolution, and armed with a new ideology and power structure, the Soviet Union began to garner international interest due to its prospects for success. Communism thus re-entered the realm of international politics as a possibly viable alternative to fascism and capitalism, and workers around the world were hopeful that the promises of the Soviets would come to fruition everywhere. We see this history reflected in the farmers’ growing awareness of the happenings on Animal Farm and in the animals’ rebelliousness on their own farms.

Part of Trotsky’s politics (called Trotskyism) was the belief that the Revolution should be encouraged in other countries, leading to an international revolution of the proletariat. Orwell mirrors this view in Snowball’s pigeon-messenger missions; he enlists the birds to spread news of the Rebellion to farms across England. Thus, Animal Farm is not just an example of change but an agent of the new solidarity of the animals.

Snowball’s efforts work to an extent, since animals on other farms not only start disobeying their owners but also agitate the owners--as Trotsky’s ideas agitated foreign nations. At once fascinated and threatened by the Soviets’ increasing power, some foreign leaders found the need to suppress the seeds of revolution in their own countries. Thus, when Pilkington and Frederick spread lies about Animal Farm, they represent the Western vilification of Communism. Although the farmers and capitalists to some degree were just protecting their own investments, it turns out that the villains really are the pigs and the Stalinists after all.

Jones’s attempt to recapture Animal Farm strengthens the bonds between the animals. The animals, small and large, work together to successfully overthrow the humans once more. Of course, the animals do not like the war. At the same time, it strengthens their determination to maintain their freedom and work for the greater good.

The Battle of the Cowshed also creates a legend about Snowball’s heroism that will become subject to revisionism throughout the book. In truth, Snowball leads the charge against Jones and his men, being shot several times in the process. Over time, memories will fade and the battle will be reinterpreted by those in power.

According to some critics, the Battle of the Cowshed represents the October Revolution, in which the Bolsheviks replaced the provisional government. This idea is supported by the battle's date (October 12) and the animals’ post-battle resolution to fire the gun on the anniversaries of the Rebellion and the Battle of the Cowshed; in that resolution, Orwell seems to liken the two events to two main turns in the Russian Revolution. But Orwell does not give us a neat parallel with history. Russia was disorganized and dissatisfied under the provisional government, whereas Animal Farm is already prospering in Chapter IV. Also, the animals are already living by the Seven Commandments, which symbolize the Soviet decrees passed after the October Revolution. As we will see in the refiguring of the Red Terror, Orwell does not adhere tightly to historical progression in the novel, letting his own message take precedence.

Source: http://www.gradesaver.com/animal-farm/study-guide/section4/

Animal Farm: Chapter III - Analysis

At first, the animals seem to be living in the utopia Major had imagined for them. Now that they have their own ideology and own the means of production, they feel “rich and free,” just as Major predicted. They enjoy a temporary calm as well as a sense of invigoration after years of discontent, now assume Man’s position of control over themselves and nature. In doing organizational work, the pigs are working in accordance with their capacity. But at the same time, the pigs are fairly large and strong animals that could surely contribute to the farm’s manual labor force. They are slowly assuming Man’s competitive advantage and becoming “the only creature that consumes without producing.”

From the very beginning of the Animal Farm era, Boxer assumes the majority of the burden of labor. Now that he is working for the animals’ benefit and not Jones’s, he feels enlivened and adopts the first of his two personal maxims, “I will work harder.” In his heartiness, usefulness, and relative dullness, Boxer represents the faithful peasant. Some critics have pointed out the similarity of this motto to that of the main character in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Indeed, Orwell was certainly familiar with Sinclair’s writings. While Sinclair’s novel criticized capitalism, Orwell’s focuses on Communism. Either way, the point expands the reader’s consciousness to see how elitism can result in willing subjugation in very different regimes. Boxer is not pugnacious despite his name, but he is as strong as his name implies. In this way, Boxer is painfully ironic. He is strong enough to kill another animal, even a human, with a single blow from his hoof, and the dogs will not be able to overpower him in Chapter VII. Still, Boxer lacks the intelligence and the nerve to sense that he is being misled and mistreated. He knows how to use his brawn only in submission to his leaders and not against them.

Chapter III marks the beginning of the dispute between Snowball and Napoleon, which evokes the power struggle between Trotsky and Stalin. After Trotsky’s fashion, Snowball is a progressive, eloquent, and public politician. He not only creates countless plans for reform, but he also dominates the Sunday meetings with his skillful and rabble-rousing orations. Snowball has the capacity to inspire the animals just as Major did in his big meeting. After Stalin’s fashion, Napoleon conducts his politics clandestinely. His public statements are generally limited to rebuttals of Snowball’s ideas; he keeps his own plans to himself. For example, Napoleon secrets the puppies away to a loft and, by keeping out of the public eye, manages to rear them into fierce, blood-hungry, creatures submissive to him. Napoleon’s collaboration with and control of the dogs evokes Stalin’s focus on quietly gaining support from powerful allies.

Chapter III also introduces the idea of propaganda. “Stirring” as it may be, “Beasts of England” is more of a revolutionary anthem than a piece of propaganda. It is meant to unite the animals in the cause of the Rebellion and help them to envision the utopia for which they must strive. But most of the animals are not intelligent enough to let the song do more than vaguely inspire their hopes. Without even being able to remember the Seven Commandments, most of the animals rely merely on the propagandist refrain, “Four legs good, two legs bad.” Snowball reduces the Seven Commandments into this single maxim, vastly oversimplifying the full system of Animalism into a catchphrase. As the animals adopt the phrase, they begin to forget the Seven Commandments, which gives the pigs the opportunity to change them. In fact, the pigs manage to break every one of the other commandments without arousing much suspicion. Clover and Muriel, who periodically think about the Seven Commandments, are easily duped in this regard. Having memorized the simple maxim in their place, they are easily convinced that their doubts about the original content of the commandments are unfounded.

Squealer, who represents the propaganda machine, introduces fear tactics in this chapter. After convincing the animals that the pigs have a right to milk and apples, he threatens the animals with Jones’s return for the first time. The pigs have created an environment where their rules must be followed out of fear of the return of the old older. It is an easy, winning response to animals that see only the two alternatives and cannot see a way back to the utopian principles that inspired their rebellion.

Source: http://www.gradesaver.com/animal-farm/study-guide/section3/