Key Quote
“"Four legs good, two legs bad"”
The Sheep · Chapter 3
Focus: “good”
The sheep's mindless chant — later changed to 'Four legs good, two legs BETTER' — demonstrates how complex ideas are reduced to slogans that prevent thought rather than encourage it.
Technique 1 — BINARY SLOGAN / REDUCTIVE ANTITHESIS
The antithesis (contrasting parallel structure) — 'good' vs 'bad,' 'four legs' vs 'two legs' — reduces complex political philosophy to a simple binary (two-option system). This reductivism IS the point: propaganda works by eliminating nuance, replacing thinking with repetition. The slogan does not need to be true; it only needs to be repeatable. Its rhythm — four beats, pause, four beats — makes it physically satisfying to chant, bypassing the mind entirely.
The slogan is a deliberate simplification of Animalism's Seven Commandments — Snowball reduces complex principles to a memorable catchphrase 'for the stupider animals.' This condescension reveals how propaganda infantilises (treats as children) its audience: the masses are not trusted with complexity, so they receive slogans. The irony is that the slogan's simplicity makes it more dangerous, not less — its very memorability makes it resistant to questioning.
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RAD — REGRESS
The slogan marks the regression of revolutionary ideals into propaganda. Complex philosophy ('all animals are comrades') becomes a chant ('four legs good'). When the pigs later change it to 'four legs good, TWO LEGS BETTER,' the regression doubles: not only has philosophy been reduced to a slogan, but the slogan itself has been corrupted. Language regresses from meaning to noise.
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Technique 2 — COMMUNAL CHANTING — THE MOB VOICE
The sheep chant in unison (together, as one voice) — they do not discuss, debate, or question. This communal chanting replaces individual thought with collective noise: the sheep have no personal opinions, only shared slogans. Orwell shows how propaganda creates a mob voice — a single, rhythmic sound that drowns out dissent not through argument but through volume and repetition.
The sheep are specifically chosen as the chanters: sheep are proverbially docile (easily led) and unintelligent. Orwell's choice is a deliberate zoological metaphor — sheep follow, they do not lead; they bleat, they do not speak. By giving the propaganda role to sheep, Orwell comments on the relationship between propaganda and its audience: effective propaganda requires willing sheep.
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Context (AO3)
STALINIST PROPAGANDA
The Soviet Union under Stalin perfected propaganda techniques: simple slogans ('Workers of the world, unite!'), repeated through state media, education, and public events, replaced genuine political debate. Orwell witnessed similar techniques in the Spanish Civil War and recognised their power.
MASS MEDIA & MANIPULATION
Orwell anticipated the role of mass media in political manipulation: the sheep's chanting is an analogue for radio, television, and (now) social media, where simple, repeated messages overwhelm complex analysis.
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WOW — MANUFACTURING CONSENT (Chomsky & Herman)
Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's theory of manufacturing consent — the idea that mass media in democratic societies create the illusion of public agreement through systematic propaganda — is anticipated by Orwell's sheep. Chomsky argues that consent is not genuine agreement but a product manufactured by those who control information: through selection, emphasis, and repetition, media create the illusion that 'everyone agrees.' The sheep's chanting IS manufactured consent: the animals hear 'four legs good' repeated so often that it becomes unquestionable truth — not because it has been proven but because it has been normalised through repetition. Chomsky would note that the sheep are not consciously lying: they genuinely believe their chant because they have never been exposed to alternatives. This is the deepest form of propaganda — not the kind that deceives people who know the truth, but the kind that prevents them from ever encountering it.
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