We Are All Boxers

Although the lower classes of society are indispensable, leaders don’t really care about each worker as an individual. On the Animal Farm, Napoleon used Boxer and other animals because they supported his power. However, for a dreamer like Napoleon to love a follower such as Boxer is impossible. As a tool he is valuable; as an animal he is nothing. Boxer grew feeble, and Napoleon sold him to the knacker. Boxer devoted his entire life to working harder and supporting Comrade Napoleon. He was a model citizen, rewarded by murder. Boxer’s work earned no respect. The worker cannot work; what use, then, is he, but to profit by his death? Here we see Orwell’s analysis of political condition. The upper and lower classes have a permanent disconnect, which always works against the lower class. Sometimes leaders will, like Napoleon at Boxer’s memorial, give grandiloquent speeches in praise of the proletariat, but nothing they do will be valuable on a personal level. To these gods among men, the world is an overgrown factory composed of replaceable pieces that must be updated to work smoothly. As an individual, I feel that I am important, that I mean something, that I am more. But there is something within myself as I read Animal Farm which whispers that in reality, I am ‘less equal’. Boxer’s death is undeniably painful; but is it painful because the innocent Boxer was killed unjustly or is it painful because of our own expendability?