POLITICISATION OF MEMORY IN GEORGE ORWELL’S ANIMAL FARM

George Orwell is a prophetic writer for many. His work, Animal Farm is one of his most exceptional, typically “Orwellian” works after the novel, 1984. He is lauded for identifying the use of language in molding thoughts and revealing the horrors of totalitarian regimes to the world. Set in fictional part of Rural England, Animal Farm is studied as an allegory, with the control of pigs over other animals being a focus point in the novella. The rebellion of the animals against Mr. Jones- the owner of the farm, the animals' subsequent management of the farm and the pigs being transformed into their former master forms the crux of the novella. What alters the Animal Farm from being a place of “supposed” equality to a state of complete mobilization, subversion, and control forms a part of Orwell's critique on totalitarian regimes. Politics of memory is about the molding of collective memory by political agents (here, the pigs) and encompasses of the political means through which events are remembered, recorded and discarded. This paper intends to trace the existence of politics of memory and highlight the means of politicisation of the same, through identification of the mediums which Napoleon and the other pigs use to control the minds of animals such as language, manipulation, persuasion, renaming and narrating, creating fear and most importantly, through what one may call- fake news. While identifying traces of the same in the modern-day world by creating a parallel between nation-states today and Orwell's Animal Farm.