How Orwell presents Old Major, and how the character develops across the text: the old boar whose speech and dream inspire the Rebellion.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'so highly regarded on the farm that everyone was quite ready to lose an hour's sleep', 'a majestic-looking pig, with a wise and benevolent appearance', 'I feel it my duty to pass on to you such wisdom as I have acquired', 'Only get rid of Man, and the produce of our labour would be our own.', 'Rebellion! I do not know when that Rebellion will come', 'Man serves the interests of no creature except himself.', 'in fighting against Man, we must not come to resemble him', 'Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers.', 'It was a dream of the earth as it will be when Man has vanished.', 'The skull of old Major, now clean of flesh, had been disinterred from the orchard', 'a boar's skull which was nailed to a post in the garden'.
Old Major's speech as persuasion: direct address, rhetorical questions, lists, and a vision of the future.
Context: Old Major as Marx and Lenin, and his skull on display as Lenin's preserved body.
For Edexcel's essay on this text, link each point to its context and the writer's purpose, which earn as many marks as knowledge of the text (16 of 40); language analysis earns no marks there.
