BAD FAITH UNDER TOTALITARIAN REGIMES IN GEORGE ORWELL’S ANIMAL FARM

Abstract

This study analyses how the character Boxer in George Orwell’s Animal Farm represents bad faith and how that bad faith constructs identity under a totalitarian regime. Using a qualitative textual analysis grounded in Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism, the study focuses on Boxer as the research object, with Animal Farm as the primary data source. Data were gathered through close reading and analysed through data condensation, data display, and conclusion verification. The findings show that Boxer’s bad faith emerges through self-limitation in learning, repeated acceptance of slogans, labour-centred self-imposition, and the postponement of self-development. Despite Boxer occasionally showing moral hesitation and brief recognition of contradiction, these moments remain fragile and do not develop into sustained resistance. The study concludes that the interplay between totalitarian pressure and self-imposed compliance shapes Boxer’s identity. Thus, bad faith functions as a process of existential self-construction rather than a single act of obedience. The study contributes to existentialist literary criticism by expanding existentialist literary criticism to identify identity development under totalitarian conditions.