Writer's methods — Animal Farm — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Writer's methods
Writer's methods
What you need to know
How Orwell's form, structure and language create meaning: the beast fable and political allegory, satire and irony, the plain narrative voice,
the circular structure, the Seven Commandments as a record of change, the windmill and other symbols, and songs, slogans and speeches.
Form: a beast fable subtitled A Fairy Story, and a political allegory and satire whose farm stands for the Soviet Union.
Narrative voice: the plain, simple narrator who reports what the animals are told and believe, so that the reader sees the irony they miss.
Structure: the circular plot from the Manor Farm back to the Manor Farm, the Commandments changed one at a time, and the windmill built, destroyed and rebuilt.
Language: speeches, songs and slogans, Squealer's figures and euphemisms, and names such as Napoleon, Squealer and Boxer.
Key quotations: 'Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer', 'Squealer's lists of figures', 'neither the words nor the tune ever seemed to the animals to come up to Beasts of England', 'Curiously enough, Clover had not remembered that the Fourth Commandment mentioned sheets', 'It was as though the windmill had never been.', 'It was as though the world had turned upside-down.', 'It did not seem strange'.
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.
