Analysis 5- Foucault's Panopticon

From Michel Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish”, his idea of Panopticon as punishment was that higher authority such as the government, had the right to punish or threaten anyone with things such as unemployment, This of course is a general implication. Thoroughly speaking, the Panopticon would punish according to their class level; the harder workers would not be punished, for example. This notion, would presence large difference within a certain community. “The Panopticon…makes it possible to draw up differences, among patients, to observe the symptoms of each individual, without the proximity of beds, the effects of contagion confusing the clinical table…” (Foucault 417). Even though its way of “discipline” varies, it creates some type of order as well.

The term of Foucault’s Panopticon would be depicted in George Orwell’s The Animal Farm in which the pigs create a government that is centered to provide equality (communism) for everyone else such as the farm animals. As time passes, the pigs are consumed with power and prevent any type of revolt by giving phony reasons of why they should continue working hard and presenting threats; one example would be when the pigs sent a sick horse to a doctor which was later revealed that he was sent to a slaughterhouse instead. This threat scared many and they worked twice as hard. “No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would only be too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong mistakes, comrades, and then where should we be?” (Orwell 69). The pig sugar coats his dictatorship so no one would dare to even question him. This piece of literature is evidently much more connected to Marxism in terms of communism but the governing rule of the people, or in Orwell’s case, animals, Foucault’s Panopticon is present.

Works Cited

Fouocault, Michel. "Discipline and Punish." Ryan, Julie Rivkin and Michael. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Berlin: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 1998. 464-487.

Orwell, George. The Animal Farm . New York: Penguin Books Ltd, 1996.