Role of Suspense in Animal Farm
Role of Suspense in Animal Farm
Suspense is commonly used in many literature works. Such as mystery, adventure, and fable. One of them is Orwell’s fable, Animal Farm. The suspense creates situation irony, reveals characteristic of the antagonist - pigs, and changes the animals from admire “animalism” to suspect “animalism”.
First Orwell uses suspense in Animal Farm to create irony. “Some of the animals remembered – or thought they remembered – that the Sixth Commandment decreed:’ No animal shall kill any other animal.’(Animal Farm, 61).” “Muriel read the Commandment for her. It ran:’ No animal shall kill any other animal without cause’ (Animal Farm, 61).” The suspense is when was the commandment changed? Who changed it? Later the ladder incident gives us the answer: there's a crash one night and Squealer is found in the barn sprawled on the ground beside a broken ladder, a brush, and a pot of paint, it is "a strange incident which hardly anyone was able to understand."(Animal Farm, 73) It is ironic that after the ladder incident, the animals still cannot figure out the “clever pigs” trick them. The animals hope to establish the Seven Commandments to operate their own farm and live a better life. However their dreams are ruined by the “superior pigs”. The narrator doesn't seem to make the connection either. But Orwell makes sure we, the readers, don't miss it. The irony—the contrast between what the animals believe, what the narrator actually tells us, and what we know to be the truth--fills us with more anger than an open denunciation could have done.
Second the characteristic of the pigs develops as the suspense is cleared one by one. It reveals that the greedy, hypocritical, and cruel pigs step by step. “’Never mind the milk, comrades!’ cried Napoleon…So the animals trooped down to the hay field to begin the harvest, and when they came back in the evening it was noticed that the milk had disappeared.”(Animal Farm, 16) Nobody knows who take the milk and where is the milk now. Later “The mystery of where the milk went to was soon cleared up. It was mixed every day into the pigs’ mash.”(Animal Farm, 22) In “The milk incident”, the pigs first trick the animals not to mind the milk. However who do mind the milk most were the pigs. They take the public property as their own. It shows that the pigs...