How Orwell presents Squealer, and how the character develops across the text: Napoleon's persuasive spokesman, who twists language and rewrites the past.
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: 'a small fat pig named Squealer, with very round cheeks, twinkling eyes, nimble movements, and a shrill voice', 'He was a brilliant talker', 'he could turn black into white', 'skipping from side to side and whisking his tail', 'Bravery is not enough', 'Loyalty and obedience are more important.', 'Tactics, comrades, tactics!', 'Are you certain that this is not something that you have dreamed, comrades?', 'Is it written down anywhere?', 'A bed merely means a place to sleep in.', 'categorically—categorically, comrade', 'he cast a very ugly look at Boxer with his little twinkling eyes', 'It was the most affecting sight I have ever seen!', 'Squealer was so fat that he could with difficulty see out of his eyes.'.
Squealer's methods: rhetorical questions, invented figures, threats that Jones will return, the dogs at his side, and the past rewritten.
Context: Squealer as the Soviet propaganda machine and newspapers such as Pravda.
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.
