Throughout history the glaring flaws and weaknesses of human nature have been inflamed and exacerbated repeatedly to devastating effect. Through the span of even the earliest human civilizations and even more so in modern society, greed has proven to be our worst flaw, promoting corruption within even the noblest of ideals and rendering people blind to the terrible consequences of their self indulgent fancies. The unchecked corruption within the brutal soviet regime under Stalin and the apathetic indifference of the population towards the extent of the destruction of the environment have provoked an outcry from George Orwell and Richard Fleicher in their separate texts "Animal Farm" ...view middle of the document...
More unbelievable then Stalin's atrocities committed was the western world's acceptance. Times of war had "necessitated" British propaganda favouring Stalin's measures in the Soviet Union despite the complete corruption of his once noble ideals.This corruption of humanity is also explored in "Soylent Green" through the government and the soylent company's depth of deception, including bribery and murder but most terrible of all is their necessary deception of the people, making the tragedy more so when Sol is enlightened on the overrated truth, this truth that drives him to death. In his private mausoleum, the shroud of unnatural orange light that hangs over the room contrasts with the beautiful images of nature with the swelling classical music providing a powerful atmosphere of emotion and longing. The effect of the contrasting techniques is to add to the clash between nature and civilization, corrupt, omnipotent government and the oppressed individual. In one of the shots in this scene, Sol is highlighted against the huge screen playing the beautiful nature footage, the lighting silhouetting him in orange. Small, orange Sol is a metaphor for the insignificance of civilization and humanity juxtaposed against the majestic power of nature, enduring since the birth of life on our planet. Finally, when Sol reveals the truth to Thorn, suppressed by the corrupt government, the dream-like sequence ends, the music halts abruptly and the orange lights suddenly switch off revealing just a dead old man, once again metaphorical for the terrible reality of the shattered earth of "Soylent Green", ruled over by a dictatorship inclined to the benefit of the upper class.George Orwell was a firm believer in the ideals of socialism and the utopia that it defined. The communist revolution that had unfolded in Russia however, was far from what Orwell envisaged as a socialist state and he despised Stalin for his abuse of power, despised the people for following him unquestioningly, despised the media and both the soviet and western governments for their propaganda and censorship but most of all, he fiercely despised those intrinsic flaws of human nature, our tendency to corrupt and pollute the most altruistic of ideals and to this end, in his novel "Animal Farm" he invites us to share his views and understanding of the corruption plaguing the Soviet Union by including several parallels to the Soviet Union in his novel, mainly the idea of the "seven Commandments of Animalism" parodying Karl Marx "Communist Manifesto" and it's five tenets of communism. "Whatever goes upon 2 legs is an enemy...All animals are equal." The effect of this parody is to help highlight and identify the insidious corruption of Animalism, parodying Communism, by Napoleon as eventually each law of Animalism is re-written and erased until only one final law remains, "All animals are equal but some are more equal then others", the fi...
