French Stuff

Essay Question/Title: It has been said that history “cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” Assess the validity of this statement in the context of a work you have studied.

Long essay:

The statement that, “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again,” is to be considered in a purely historical context to mean that the past, no matter how painful, will not fade, but can stopped from recurring in the future, through acknowledging its existence and facing it with courage. In the context of George Orwell’s Animal Farm this statement shows itself to be only partially valid. However, it must be acknowledged that this novella is fiction and only approaches fact through its allegorical representation of the russian revolution, therefore, this statement is taken slightly out of context. Orwell illustrates the partial validity of the statement through the haziness of the memories of the animals in regard to times before and during the revolution, the use of the character Benjamin as a constant, and the near cyclical features of the main plotline combined with the gradual transformation from pig to man and from communist regime to tyranny.

In his novella, Animal Farm, Orwell crafts the animals of the the farm as forgetful and oblivious to deceit in order to convey that history can in fact be unlived. First, the animals forget values pertinent to past events such as those put forth by Old Major. In his speech he states, “Man is the only creature that consumes without producing,” and all the animals agree and take to his teachings. But, later on in the novel, the animals do not protest when the pigs take and consume milk and apples and justify it by saying it is not in ”a spirit of selfishness and privilege” and that they are “brainworkers”, even if they are consuming without producing. Because values and memories are all one can take with them from the past, forgetting them and letting them fade is almost synonymous to unliving the past. After Snowball's expulsion Napoleon needs to control the animals so he states that, “documents had been discovered which revealed further details about Snowball's complicity with Jones.” This by itself does not prove much about history being unlived, but does show history being altered. However, Orwell’s next sentence, “It now appeared that Snowball had not, as the animals had previously imagined, merely attempted to lose the Battle of the Cowshed… but had been openly fighting on Jones's side.” This passage is carefully crafted to show that the leaked documents directly influenced what the animal’s remembered of the past, causing them to unlive the true past. This is seen primarily in the phrase, “as the animals had previously imagined” where the animals as a group are shown to have discredited the past by using the word “imagined.” This is parallel event in the novel is parallel to Vyacheslav Molotov, Russian media, and propaganda during the Russian revolution, to which the statement,”history cannot be unlived” is relevant. Finally, the animals, “could no longer remember very clearly what conditions had been like before the Rebellion”and in society, “there was no one who remembered the old days before the Rebellion,” showing that history can be forgotten and unlived by both individuals and groups. Through the animals forgetting and altering the events and ideals of the past, both during and before their lifetimes, Orwell shows that history can in fact be unlived. However some, such as Benjamin,are able to tell when history has been altered, and can recall life as it was before.

By using Benjamin as a constant, a metaphorical yardstick held up against the plotline, Orwell is able to portray the idea of nothing ever changing permanently, and new ways falling back into old ways, showing that history will always be re-lived, even if faced with courage and optimism, as it was initially in Animal Farm. Orwell crafts Benjamin as a constant in many passages placed strategically throughout the text. Orwell writes that after the rebellion, Benjamin, “seemed quite unchanged.” On top of that, Benjamin is often overheard saying that,"Donkeys live a long time,” showing that he will live through all of the events described in the novel, and remain constant. Benjamin’s description of lack of change being, “unalterable law of life,” also reflects his constant nature. Imagine Benjamin as a line on a graph with a slope of 0; completely horizontal. Now, the plot in the context of the regime, is the outline of a positively skewed unimodal distribution. These two lines intersect at two points. The first is at the very ‘beginning’ of the graph. In this section of the graph the two lines are on top of each other, representing a period of time in which Benjamin’s mood reflects the general situation, the farm under Jones’ rule. The second intersection is preceded by the lines gradually approaching, representing the pigs’ transformation from pig to man, and is followed by a stretch where the lines lie on top of eachother. This stretch is parallel to the pigs’ tyrannous rule we assume followed the events described in the novel. These two points act as markers in the text. By the first intersection, the reader most likely sees how the situation reflects Benjamin’s attitude, but less and less so until the plot reaches its climax. Once the reader reaches this second intersection, knowing that Benjamin’s attitude remains constant, he/she can see that the situation has become very similar to the situation during the first intersection, highlighting the fact that nothing has changed, that nothing will change, that history will always be relived. Through crafting Benjamin as a character with a constant mood and opinion, alive throughout the whole of the novella Orwell manages to highlight the other animals’ deception as well as the fact that history always returns to be relived.  While the use of Benjamin allows the reader to more clearly see the animal’s deception, Benjamin’s lack of courage hinders the animals from seeing the same.

In the statement, “History cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again,” there is no specification on whose courage is needed to stop historical themes and patterns. In Animal Farm, the past is faced with cowardice by many of the animals but with courage and assertiveness by the pigs. Orwell uses the pigs’ courage, combined with their gradual transformation from pig to man, communist to tyrant to reveal that even with courage, society always returns to the same, or a similar, state. In the novel, history is faced by with courage by the pigs and they eliminate the threat it poses. This is achieved through its alteration such as the alteration of Snowball’s supposed role in the battle of the cowshed, as mentioned in the paragraph above. This change in history hinders the animals from seeing the issues with the current regime that had been issues pointed out in the previous regime. This forces them to relive history, disproving the second part of the statement: “but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.[(history)].” This is again reinforced by some of the cyclical features of the plot, for example, the use of alcohol. At the beginning of the novel, Mr. Jones, leader of the farm, is ““too drunk to remember to close the popholes,” and by the end, the pigs “Fill [their] glasses to the brim.” This passage along with the famous last line, in which the animals are trying to differentiate between the pigs and the men but find it “ impossible to say which was which”, shows that society always returns to its previous state almost as if finding its balance. This forces society as a whole to relive society, even if some roles are reversed. In Orwell’s novella, the pig’s transformation from to man, or allegorically speaking from true communists to tyrants, along with their courage and assertiveness show that history faced with courage by those in power will be twisted, and ultimately lived again.