Stylistic Analysis of Excerpts of Animal Farm

Animal farm is a dystopian novella written by George Orwell， which is one of the most important dystopian novellas in the history. The work is known as a dystopian political allegory. So how does it work？ I will make a stylistic analysis， hoping to have a clearer look of the work. I choose several representative paragraphs as an example. This extract describes a picture that after revolution， animals were on fire with excitement to get the hay in.

1. At the Lexical Level

1.1 Vivid and specific words

In this extract， we can find many vivid and specific words to describe how hard they worked while getting the hay in， which makes us able to imagine a picture that how the farm was working on after the revolution. Most of them devoted themselves to the farm without self-seeking. For example： Boxer and Clover would harness themselves to the cutter or the horse-rake and tramp steadily round and round the field.

1.2 Accessibility

In the above table， we can see that percentage of hard words in the extract is approximately 4.57%. And the fog index is 10.228， which is around a normal accessible text level. The extract is not obscure to understand.

2. At the Syntactic/Grammatical Level

2.1 As far as syntax is concerned， we can find a variety of sentence types. In this part， we will mostly concentrate on sentence types.

According to the table， short sentences have a larger number， comparing with long sentences. The extract is not complicated but still has several sentences that are not so easy to understand. The distribution of short sentences and long sentences is well organized with an appropriate rhythm.

Since the extract is from a literature， most of the sentences are major sentences. Only two sentences “Gee up， comrade” and “Whoa back， comrade”，which was delivered by the pigs while working are minor sentences.

The extract consists of periodic sentences. For example： Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey.

Periodic sentences can create suspense in the readers mind and therefore achieve a special effect of emphasis and climax. In the second sentence， we can see that other animals were working tirelessly， while the donkeys words were hard to understand. This creates suspense to lead the reader to continue the following paragraphs or following chapters to find out the fact. There is no typical balanced sentence in this extract; all the sentences are loose sentences. Since it is a narrative novel， it doesnt need to be so regular.

3. At the Semantic Level 

In novels， in order to better convey meanings， figure language is often used. Therefore， we can find the use of different figure of speech. In the book， the use of personality， parable and sarcasm play the most important part on conveying the meaning. We still could analyze this there main figure of speech rest upon this extract.

3.1 personality

From the whole extract， we can easily find that all the animals are conscious and they can use English to communicate with each other.

3.2 Parable

Animals drove away their master for they had a dream of all animals are equal. In fact， more sadly， animals were more than ever before， live in the hypocrisy and lies fooled by new and crueler rulers. The writer use animals to reflect the reality. Looking back to the history， a large number of crimes were in name of freedom or equality. The writer writes the novel to call upon dont repeat some criminal history.

3.3 Sarcasm

Boxer was a very impressive animal in the novel. He was hardworking and faithful， and he always shout his mottos： “napoleon is always right” and “I will work harder”. Finally， after devoting all himself to the farm， Boxer was weak and it was his time to retire. While， the pig thought he was useless so they sent Boxer to the slaughterhouse， in return for whisky for pigs. How ironic it was. They were just fooled by the pigs——the rulers.

4. Conclusion

Above all are my stylistic analysis and my own thinking about the Animal Farm， based on several paragraphs as an example， mainly concentrating on lexical， syntactic/grammatical and semantic levels. In conclusion， this book is a political allegory in formal style. Meanwhile， there are still some perspectives untouched upon. Taking these factors into account， it still needs further researches.

References：

[1]董啟明.新编英文文体学教程[M].北京：北京大学出版社，2007.

【作者简介】董诗琪，湖南省长沙理工大学。