Satire Comparative Essay: Smart Phone and Animal Farm - Satirical Texts

Smart Phone and Animal Farm are both satirical texts in which satirical techniques express the manipulative and counterproductive nature of communist societies. Although both target individual regimes, the underlying purpose of these texts is to identify flaws of communism, which is achieved through using satirical techniques in different manners, but ultimately sending the same message to readers.

Smart phone is a cartoon with the purpose of showing the ineffective and manipulative way Kim Jong-Un has ruled communist North Korea. Siri, the woman acting as a smart phone, is a symbol for the general public, as shown by the gesture of one straight arm Jong-Un uses to speak. Moreover, the objectification of the woman as an item is an analogy to the reduced value citizens gain from their dictators. The squinting of one eye of Siri is caricatured to represent askance of the public and the anomalies of tyrannical regimes. The ‘defective’ meaning of one eye open against the stereotype relates to the abnormal growth patterns in North Korea. The cartoonist uses verbal irony to express North Korea’s lack of development. While the news of “producing its first smartphone” is meant to be heroic, the ironic message it sends is that communist North-Korea is undeveloped. This is supported by symbolism by showing that a “smart phone” which doesn’t really exist, but is just an amalgamation of undeveloped methods such as cabled phones, is the best that the communist system can produce.

Animal farm by Orwell furthers the counterproductive nature of communism and adds to its flaws, but does so through an allegorical fable that parodies Russia’s communist history. The story, set in a farm called “Manor Farm”, tells of the expulsion of Jones the farmer, who represents Czar Nicholas II, by the animals. The animals are symbols to represent specific sectors of the population, such as Boxer representing the working class. They begin following “Animalism”, symbol for Communism, and change the name of the farm to “Animal Farm”, but the incongruity of animals running the farm highlights the impracticality of communism. The story explains the corruption of idealist communism by Napoleon, the symbol for Stalin, whose rise is through the eviction of rival Snowball, the symbol for Trotsky, the creation of the dog police which represents the NKVD, and the constant twisting of “Animalism”. Irony is used by Orwell in that the pigs are the ones who betray the commandments which they worked out, highlighting hypocrisy. In the end, “Manor Farm” returns as a microcosm for the problems faced by the animals, suggesting “Animalism” has just removed one set of oppressors