Question

Read the passage from Animal Farm.

For the next two days Boxer remained in his stall. The pigs had sent out a large bottle of pink medicine which they had found in the medicine chest in the bathroom, and Clover administered it to Boxer twice a day after meals. In the evenings she lay in his stall and talked to him, while Benjamin kept the flies off him. Boxer professed not to be sorry for what had happened. If he made a good recovery, he might expect to live another three years, and he looked forward to the peaceful days that he would spend in the corner of the big pasture. It would be the first time that he had had leisure to study and improve his mind. He intended, he said, to devote the rest of his life to learning the remaining twenty-two letters of the alphabet.

Which detail does Orwell include to support the theme that a lack of education can make a person easier to oppress?

“The pigs had sent out a large bottle of pink medicine which they had found in the medicine chest in the bathroom, and Clover administered it to Boxer twice a day after meals.”
“If he made a good recovery, he might expect to live another three years, and he looked forward to the peaceful days that he would spend in the corner of the big pasture.”
“It would be the first time that he had had leisure to study and improve his mind.”
“He intended, he said, to devote the rest of his life to learning the remaining twenty-two letters of the alphabet.”

Answer 1

“He intended, he said, to devote the rest of his life to learning the remaining twenty-two letters of the alphabet.”

This detail shows Boxer’s extreme lack of education (he knows only a few letters), which makes him trusting and manipulable—supporting the theme that ignorance makes people easier to oppress.