Benjamin The Squealer

In his story, George Orwell engenders the character Benjamin, the oldest, most sagacious, and stereotypical donkey; obstinate and cynical. Benjamin's personality does not seem to transmute after the revolt, as he does not care for the rebellion. He believes his world is identically tantamount with animals in control, and with humans in control. As the book progresses, Benjamin is in several significant scenes in the book, where he is a bystander, but does nothing. An example of this is when Benjamin saw squealer changing the commandments. Benjamin was the only animal besides the pigs we know how to write. Due to this, he was able to see that the pigs had changed the seven commandments to “No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.” Orwell tells …show more content…
Despite, the animal's cries the van moves along with Boxer in it, who is never heard from again. The following day, the pigs address this matter and say Boxer was taken away to the hospital, where squealer was with him when he died. Although, Benjamin most likely knew the truth about Boxer’s death he was silent, and never spoke of Boxer again. Benjamin is may represent the cynical, unfriendly, but intelligent personality type. It is clear he has an unfriendly nature, as he has never been friendly towards the other animals. In addition, he constantly makes cynical comments such as “ donkeys live a long time.” Regardless of all of this Benjamin is intelligent, because he is the only animal (besides the pigs) who can read. Orwell could have been representing Benjamin as a stereotypical human, much like us humans, he believes life is hard, and will not be changed for the better. By including a character like this, he may be trying to teach the readers the lesson, that us humans are extremely similar to Benjamin. More specifically, he was trying to show the similarities between our ideas of