Discuss the use of visions and dreams in Animal Farm and Watership Down. CAND 6

CANDIDATE 6

Discuss the use of visions and dreams in Animal Farm and Watership Down

Although both Animal Farm and Watership Down feature dreams and visions, these supernatural experiences are interrupted and used in very different ways. In Watership Down, Fiver doesn’t fully understand his vision and has a far more negative feel to it the real reason why some rabbits leave is due to how the vision scared them. However Major’s speech caused change via inspiration and anger towards their current position.

The use of Fiver’s vision resulted in a successful ending, where the characters were better off than they were at the beginning, whereas the animals in Animal Farm are in a situation as bad, if not worse than before. This could be because the rabbits react to Fiver’s vision ultimately to survive, to prevent an imminent death. In contrast, the animals in Animal Farm react to Major’s dream in order to improve their lives, not to save them (not in the short term anyway). The rabbits intentions were pure from the beginning, and manipulated only by their will to survive- Fiver does not experience anger during his vision but only fear, whereas Major’s dream and speech are tainted by his apparent hatred to humans, which ultimately leads to their downfall, as this intentions are not pure.

An important distinction between Fiver’s vision and Major’s dream is how Major uses his dream to manipulate the animals for doing what is ultimately good for the pigs, whereas Fiver has no intentions beside saving the warren.

Although Major’s intentions may firstly seem true, upon closer analysis it is clear he is manipulating the animals from the very beginning. His dream actually has very little importance in what he has to say, he only uses it to fully bring his point home. Major invokes sympathy in his audience in telling them he’s going to die right from the beginning and doesn’t tell them what they came to hear until they had listened to his entire speech.

The most important difference between Fiver’s vision and Major’s dream is how Major’s dream doesn’t seem to be legitimate. He claims the song is old yet the language is modern, the rhyme is easy to remember (making is easier for the pigs to manipulate more people) and the song is contradictory. The melody also doesn’t seem to be original- “something between Clementine and La Curcuacha”. Major’s predictions never fully come true, whereas Fiver’s do in full capacity. The true use of visions in Watership Down are to keep the characters from harm and without Fiver the Rabbits would have never made it to their utopia. But the use of dreams in Animal Farm are not for the good of the animals, but only the pigs, and as a result they never reach their utopia- although one could say the pigs get to their own twisted utopia, and so as a result Major’s dream may have actually came true but only for the pigs. Therefore the use of dreams in Animal Farm may allow the only the pigs to reach their utopia.