Examiner's Notes
You assessed this answer as Grades 8–9.
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How does Orwell use the character of Boxer to explore ideas about power in Animal Farm?
Write about:
- what Boxer says and does
- how Orwell uses the character of Boxer to explore ideas about power.
Orwell presents Boxer as a good character as he works very hard in the story and believes in the revolution. The way he speaks shows that he doesn’t understand the ideas behind the revolution but believes in them anyway. ‘Napoleon is always right’ shows that he trusts the pigs and never questions what they are doing.
Another thing is that he is the strongest character on the farm and without him the other animals would be stuck. For example, Orwell says, ‘Boxer was the admiration of everybody’ so we know we are meant to think he is basically a good person. Orwell also says ‘the entire work of the farm seemed to rest upon his mighty shoulders’ so he seems trustworthy and important to us. He works hard on the farm and helps to get in the harvest twice and build the windmill. He also fights to defend the farm even though the second time he does, at the Battle of the Windmill, he is badly hurt.
Boxer is powerful in the Battle of the Cowshed. He is at the front of the fighting and is really brave and is one of the reasons that the animals win. He is really upset when he thinks he has killed the stable-lad. Snowball says that this doesn’t matter and that ‘the only good human being is a dead one’. This shows us that Snowball is cruel and if he ruled Animal Farm things might not be much different.
Boxer is strong and has that sort of power but is not clever. He finds it very hard to learn to read and forgets what he has learned very easily. Because this is a political book, Orwell uses him to show how Russian working people got badly treated by their government. Once Boxer loses his strength the pigs sell him off for glue so Orwell is saying that once working people can’t work anymore governments don’t care about them and treat them cruelly. We like Boxer so we think that this is really wrong.
To end with we see that Boxer is a strong character and so that is how he is powerful. But the pigs’ power is cleverness and that means they can defeat him. So Orwell is saying that you can’t win unless you are as clever as the government.