Author's Note: This is my essay response to Animal Farm but this is my best essay this year so I want it on this blog too. Not sure where this came from as like all my other pieces. I should really find out who and what I am.
Strength is a common idea but the meaning goes deeper than most people's comprehension. The common facet of strength is physical power like having muscle and being able to lift heavy objects. Like a diamond, strength goes much deeper than the surface of physical capabilities and it is this inner strength that is cursed to fail humanity every time it is drawn upon.
Strength of the mind and heart fail when they are most needed. Power of the mind cannot be relied upon to grasp the fragile balance of what is good and what is bad. For example someone who is considered a bad person may think he is doing good and is only thought as bad by the majority of the people. Others may think of him as good. The mind creates it's own reality but it doesn't have the strength to continue when faced with Truth. Good and bad are only views of perception and Truth cannot be perceived incorrectly and so this shuts down the mind's filter thus driving humanity insane. Napolean the hog on Animal farm could not face the Truth that he made the farm worse than it was with the humans. His insanity manifested itself by making him more human than was natural. Walking on two legs and consuming alcohol was too much for the pigs to stay pigs.
The heart fails in pureness. Love cannot be absolute for the heart's curiosity is like the mind's. It wanders from place to place never staying in one place for long. You can tie it down with all sorts of promises and vows but they will not ring true for long. In the end nothing is eternal. We cannot use the power of our frail mind to force our heart to love, even though we delude ourselves into thinking we can. This is the way the heart fails our mind which fails our body and our spirit. Napolean didn't even try to hold his heart in one spot, except maybe on greed. This, in the beginning, is what made him smarter than the rest of the pigs.
Napolean's mind and heart are what failed him in George Orwell's Animal Farm. His heart turned away from love and was forced to fill that hole in his heart with the lusty greed for power. As this was slowly happening his mind was becoming addicted to the absolute control he had over the entire farm. Like how drugs mess with a person's mind the control and power are turning Napolean into a tyrant. Before this power he was just an ordinary pig but afterwards he was worse than the former master of the farm Mr. Jones. His strength of mind and heart destroyed him as they destroy all with absolute control.
