Social Justice

– Measure For Measure, Animal Farm, American History X Essay, Research Paper

Social justice is a topic known all to well in today’s society. Such issues as social heirarchial structure and unjust representatives of citizens of nations are issues in need of attention by those in power. Corruption, lies and greed by those in power however stand in the way of this form of justice from occurring, leaving many with little or no social status open to prejudice on race, religious and sexual grounds.

Outlined by William Shakespeare in Measure for Measure and George Orwell in Animal Farm is the ease in which power can corrupt.

A utopian society is created once a farmer is overthrown from his position in charge of all the animals on “Manor Farm”. A set of rules to govern the citizens of the revolutionary society was decided upon and these were to be the fairest and least controversial rules for the citizens of “Animal Farm” to abide by:

“The Commandments were written on the tarred wall in great white letters that could be read thirty yards away. They ran thus:

THE SEVEN COMMANDMENTS

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy

2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a freind

3. No animal shall wear clothes

4. No animal shall sleep in a bed

5. No animal shall drink alcohol

6. No animal shall kill any other animal

7. All animals are equal.

It was very neatly written, and except that “friend” was written “freind” and one of the “S’s” was the wrong way round, the spelling was correct all the way through. Snowball read it aloud for the benefit of the others. All the animals nodded in complete agreement, and the cleverer ones at once began to learn the Commandments by heart.”As months passed on Animal Farm, the pigs, who thought they were the dominant force in the running of the animal farm, became more and more in control. Animal Farm, had now become the fairest it would ever be.

Word of what had happened to Manor Farm had spread across all of Ireland and England. Animals all over the country were following in their paths led by pigs Napoleon and Snowball. However, as this was happening, Animal Farm was heading to ruin as the pigs became selfish and ignorant. They would now consider themselves above the laws and commandments they had set, as they believed they had set the way for the new society. To a greater extent, leaders Snowball and Napoleon would control and decide the fate of the farm, setting rations, “In January food fell short. The corn ration was drastically reduced”, deciding hours on the Mill, and even who would live to see another day, as we saw in Chapter 7 when Snowball had been declared a traitor:

The three hens who had been the ringleaders in the attempted rebellion over the eggs now came forward and stated that Snowball had appeared to them in a dream and incited them to disobey Napoleon’s orders. They, too, were slaughtered. Then a goose came forward and confessed to having secreted six ears of corn during the last year’s harvest and eaten them in the night. Then a sheep confessed to having urinated in the drinking pool.urged to do this, so she said, by Snowball.and two other sheep confessed to having murdered an old ram, an especially devoted follower of Napoleon, by chasing him round and round a bonfire when he was suffering from a cough. They were all slain on the spot. And so the tale of confessions and executions went on, until there was a pile of corpses lying before Napoleon’s feet and the air was heavy with the smell of blood, which had been unknown there since the expulsion of Jones.”The farm which had once been the source of inspiration with a democratic society was now a farm of death, destruction and communism.

This is the impact of social injustice on what was once a just community in a revolutionary society. When power corrupts as happened in Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’, there is no telling where it will end or what damage will be caused. Such social injustice also occurred in William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, wherein a leader corrupted the legal system for his own benefit.

Vienna is being lead by Angelo, a name reflecting ‘bad angel’, and the city has been outraged due to his corrupt ways. The play is based around the court case of Claudio and the injustice delivered to him by the corrupt leader for a crime that some would consider being trivial.

Claudio had made love to his fianc.e prior to their marriage. At this time in Vienna, this was a crime punishable by death and Angelo was quick to pounce on this fact, sending Claudio to gaol and sentencing him to death. In studies of justice we have learnt that justice depends on the situation and this seems grossly unjust for a couple planning to be wed.

After Claudio is sentenced to death, Shakespeare creates an interesting turn of events showing just how corrupt leadership can be. Once Claudio’s sister, Isabella, a novice nun approaches Angelo to dispute his decision and begs for mercy, he tells her that in order to save her brother, she will have to give up her virginity to him:

Angelo:

“Admit no other way to save his life-

As I subscribe not that, nor any other,

But in the loss of question- that you, his sister,

Finding yourself desired of such a person,

Whose credit w

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