Volume II Special Issue I January 2022

Name of Author : Md. Tabish Nawaz

Title of the paper : A Postcolonial Study of the Self and Other in George Orwells Animal Farm

Abstract: Postcolonialism represents the study of the exploitation of human beings and how they were controlled through various means by Western societies. One of the foremost binaries of Self and the Other adopted by the colonizers was the key element in ruling the colonized. They were exploited in terms of dichotomies where one negates the other as well as appears dominant to the Other. It is the single greatest tool of discrimination towards the colonized which is still relevant in parts of colonial countries around the world. Though George Orwells Animal Farm is mostly associated with the Russian Revolution of 1917, we can see the idea of binaries heavily used by Napoleon and Co. to rule the other animals at the farm. This paper titled A Postcolonial Study of Self and the Other in George Orwells Animal Farm will study the novel through the lens of the concept of postcolonial binaries given by the postcolonial theorists. George Orwell is the product of imperialism as he was born in the British era of Motihari, India. He had the opportunity to closely look into the matters of colonial rule while being posted in Burma in his youth. His novel Animal Farm is an allegory and a political satire on the totalitarian state of countries during his time. Therefore, we see the power hegemony of the Self and the Other throughout the novel. According to Edward Said, the relationship between the Occident and the Orient is the relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony, Said where the Occident is the colonizer and the Orient is the colonized. Similarly, the Self and the Other are represented as the colonizers and the colonized. The colonizer must see others as different from self and maintain sufficient identity with the other to valorize control over it.

Keywords : Postcolonialism, George Orwells, Revolution

DOI :

Page Number : 38-41