A Brief Analysis of Animals’ Rights in Animal Farm_英语论文

摘要

《动物庄园》是英国作家乔治·奥威尔最著名的作品之一，被公认为20 世纪最杰出的政治寓言小说。作品主要讲述农场的一群动物成功地进行了一场“革命”，将压榨他们的人类东家赶出农场，建立一个平等的动物社会。最终，动物领导却成为比人类东家更加独裁和极权的统治者。大多数学者主要关注的是小说中借助动物所反映的政治主题，却忽略了动物本身。本文在动物权利视角下，根据小说故事情节发展，围绕动物们的悲惨生活，动物权利的不平等，以及动物和人界限的模糊性三个方面,进行文本分析。本文旨在探讨小说中的动物权利，进而思考人类是如何看待动物的，作家是怎样再现动物的，动物和人的区别，人与动物的关系，权利的界限等问题。

关键词： 《动物庄园》  动物权利  人与动物的关系  权利界限

Abstract

Animal Farm is one of the most famous works of the British writer George Orwell, and is recognized as the most outstanding political fable in the 20th century. The work mainly tells the story of a group of farm animals successfully carried out a “revolution” to squeeze their human owners out of the farm and establish an equal animal society. However, animal leaders eventually become more authoritarian and totalitarian rulers than their human masters. Most scholars focus on the political themes reflected by animals in the novels, but ignore the animals themselves. From the perspective of animal rights, this thesis makes a text analysis according to the development of the story plot of the novel which includes three aspects: the miserable life of animals, the inequality of animal rights, and the fuzziness of the boundary between animals and humans. The purpose of this paper is to explore the animal rights in the novel, and then to think about how human beings view animals, how writers reproduce animals, the differences between animals and people, the relationship between people and animals, and the boundary of rights.

Key words: Animal Farm  animal rights  relationship between humans and animals  boundary of rights

Contents

Chapter One  Introduction 1

1.1  A Brief Introduction to George Orwell 1

1.2  A Brief Introduction to Animal Farm 1

1.3  Purpose of the Thesis 2

1.4  Structure of the Thesis 3

Chapter Two  Literature Review 4

2.1  Introduction 4

2.2  Previous Studies on Animal Farm Abroad 4

2.3  Previous Studies on Animal Farm at Home 5

2.4  Summary 7

Chapter Three  Theoretical Framework 8

3.1  Introduction 8

3.2  Background of Animal Rights 8

3.3  Definition of Animal Rights and Its Developments 10

3.4  Evaluation of Animal Rights 11

Chapter Four  Animal Rights Analysis in Animal Farm 13

4.1  Introduction 13

4.2  The Miserable Life of Animals 13

4.3  Inequality of Animal Rights 15

4.3.1 Definition of Animal Rights 15

4.3.2 Unequal Rights between Human Beings and Animals 16

4.3.3 Inequality of Rights among Animals 18

4.4  Fuzziness of the Boundary between Humans and Animals 20

Chapter Five  Conclusion 23

5.1  Major Findings 23

5.2  Limitations And Suggestions for Future Study 24

Bibliography

Acknowledgments