A long time ago God gave Moses a slate with the Ten Commandments written on them for us to follow. It serves as a guideline for how we should live our lives and make it to Heaven. In the fictional story Animal Farm by George Orwell the seven Commandments of Animalism serves as a Base for animal equality. Eventually the animals break these commandments one by one and create a metaphorical dictatorship. This relates to The Churches Ten commandments in a few ways. First the Jews in Exodus love the idea of the Commandments, but break a lot of them.
Second, the number seven and how it relates to the history of our church and how that number may relate to our faith. Next, some of the commandments have many similarities. for example, “no animal should kill any other animal,” (Orwell 21) and “thou shall not kill. ” (Exodus 20:13). God gave Moses 603 commandments which eventually God broke into 10 rules that we have to follow. The pigs also gave the animals 7 “unbreakable,” laws called “The Seven Commandments of Animalism. ” In both of these stories the animals/ humans break all these laws many times.
Moses leaves for some time, and as Moses leaves the Jews create a gold calf that they believed as their God. That breaks many commandments, including one of the big 3 “There is one God and none should be put before me. ” The animals also, one by one, break every rule they made. The pigs immediately take food, beds and many other things for themselves and try to alter their unalterable laws. The pigs get drunk and they even kill the horse. Breaking every law and creating a dictatorship.
“ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS,” (Orwell 112). This quote shows that the pigs have selfish personalities and try to manipulate other animals into thinking all animals share the same equality, but all the pigs actually want pertains to obtaining a higher position in their “dictatorship. ” The Jews also thought just about themselves and dissed Moses and God by creating their own false “god,” to worship. The number Seven has importance to the Catholic faith, also there’s seven Commandments of Animalism.
Theres seven corporal works of mercy, seven spiritual works of mercy, and most importantly seven capital or deadly sins. In some ways these have major similarities. God gave us the Seven Deadly Sins to follow as a guideline to what we can and cannot do. If we commit one of those sins we may need help and if we do not repent we can go to hell. If the animals would break their commandments they would have gotten executed or kicked out of the farm. Obviously the animals broke all these rules, but they are still members of the farm.
I think this symbolizes God’s gift of free will. God lets us break the Deadly Sins, but in order to make it to Heaven we need to repent. The animals can break these rules, but in order to keep any sense of peace in the farm the animals need to follow them. The Ten Commandments and the Seven Commandments of Animalism relate in many ways. For example the sixth Catholic Commandment states “thou shall not kill,” (Exodus 20:13) and the Sixth Commandment of Animalism says “no animal shall kill any other. (Orwell 21)
Also a lot of the rules the Animals made has to do with staying or looking as far off from humans as possible. Humans in Animal Farm play the role of sin, as the ten Catholic commandments creates a base for us to use to help with not committing sin. So if in Animal Farm humans play the role of sin the two sets of commandments relate to each other by achieving the common goal of not sinning or as in animal farm not participating in humanistic activities.
These two sets of commandments were meant for completely different things, but there are many similarities as well. The animals made these rules to follow as God did with the Commandments. Both sets of people or animals broke these commandments in many ways. The Jews committed idolatry as the animals broke all these rules one by one. In order to get freedom both the Jews and the Animals had to follow their Commandments just as we do today.
