April Boyd
Steven Wexler
10-21-10
English 313 (Popular culture)
Most of the time when we think of love or romance the first situation that pops into our mind is boy meets girl, they fall in love, and live happily ever after. It doesn’t first occur to us that there are other displays of romantic love that are not between two people in romantic relationship. There’s the romantic love of a child with idea of Christmas, or the housewife’s romantic love of the white picket fenced house, or the romance between an artist and their place in history. Similar to this non-human to human romances, George Orwell’s Animal Farm explores the love of a bunch of farm animals to the idea of a utopian society. As with most developing love, the farm animals’ affection is displayed in actions, songs, and writings. However, their romance with the idea of a perfect farm becomes radical romance when they begin to resemble Oxford American Dictionary’s definition of “radical” by performing drastic, thorough, and extreme actions to obtain their love.
Romance is defined by McDonald as a romantic situation that involves people “ falling” in love, a romance becomes a radical when it stretches beyond this definition and into an area where most lovers don’t travel. Radical love is demonstrated in Animal Farm when two of the main characters move beyond what the rest of animals will do for their love. Napoleon (a pig / dictatorial leader) and Boxer (a horse / field worker) voluntarily do what the others would not do for their love; Napoleon oppresses the other animals that are supposed equals and Boxer works himself to death for his love of a utopian society. They commit radical, extreme, and uncommon actions in an effort to obtain love.
One of the many interesting things about Napoleon and Boxer’s efforts at love is that they both loved the same thing but went about obtaining it in different ways. Radical love in Animal Farm – and in life – doesn’t have a static definition. It is something that is generated out of an individual and their cultural training. Like our discussions in class touched on, someone’s actions are formed by their culture. People are trained by their surroundings to know normal or abnormal behavior or the difference between love and radical love. For Napoleon, his pig culture was rude and assertive, so it made sense that his display of radical love would be violent. For Boxer, his culture was primarily worker, therefore it made sense that his showing of radical love by committing himself until the completion of the windmill, which would lead to his death.
This idea of two people with the same object of their love being strived for in different ways is also illustrated in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. The two aspiring matriarchs -- May and Maggie – fight for Big Daddy’s estate in different ways. Mae, a mother of too many children flaunts her offspring as her proof that her man should take it over. Maggie, childless but filled with Southern charm, appeals to common sense and Big Daddy’s love of his second born, Brick, as to why they should inherit everything. Yet, in the end, they both exhibit radical love by exceeding the expectations of what anyone thought they would do. Maggie lies about giving big Daddy an heir, Mae becomes ruthless by spreading rumors about Brick. In these demonstrations of love for what they desire, they are radical in their context.
In both of these stories the ideology that drives the characters is fueled by the culture they were born into. Maggie and Mae are taught that obtaining money and privilege equals security. So, they radically go after this ideal life in the same way that Napoleon and Boxer feel that by obtaining this utopian, ideal lifestyle they too will have security. What none of these characters realized during their quest to obtain their dreams is we are all, as Chris Barker refers to in Cultural Studies: Theory & Practice, socially constructed people and, when going about making a decision, we cannot separate ourselves from our environment.
From the class discussions and the assigned readings, radical loves seems to be an action that transcends normal love behavior and is shaped by our cultural context. It is a following after an object of desire in a way that is abnormal, extreme, and done with more passion than those around you. From this place, the actions of the animals in Animal Farm demonstrate radical love because they exceeded the boundaries of love set by their farm culture.
Work Cited
Orwell, George. Animal Farm. A signet classic New York: Harcourt Inc. 1956
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