Animal Farm

Summary

Animal Farm is a short beast fable about a revolution that turns into a tyranny. On Manor Farm near Willingdon in England, the old prize boar Major gathers the animals one night and describes a dream of a world without Man, who takes their milk, eggs and labour and sends them to the knacker when they are old. He teaches them the song Beasts of England and dies three nights later. When the drunken farmer Mr. Jones forgets to feed them, the animals rise up and drive him off. The pigs, cleverest of the animals, take the lead: Snowball, eloquent and inventive; Napoleon, a large, silent Berkshire boar; and Squealer, a persuasive talker. They rename the place Animal Farm and paint Seven Commandments on the barn wall, ending with the rule that all animals are equal; Snowball later reduces them for the slower animals to the maxim that four legs are good and two legs bad. The first harvest is a triumph, carried by the huge, loyal cart-horse Boxer, whose answer to every problem is that he will work harder. But the pigs quietly keep the milk and apples for themselves, and Squealer explains that brainworkers need them. The animals defeat Jones's attempt to retake the farm in the Battle of the Cowshed. Snowball draws plans for a windmill to bring electricity; Napoleon opposes him and then sets on him nine fierce dogs he has raised in secret from puppies, and Snowball flees. Napoleon abolishes the Sunday debates, adopts the windmill as his own idea, and begins trading with humans through the solicitor Mr. Whymper. The pigs move into the farmhouse, and each commandment is quietly altered when broken: no animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets, kill any other animal without cause, or drink alcohol to excess. Every misfortune is blamed on the absent Snowball. Animals who confess to plotting with him are killed by the dogs. The windmill falls in a storm, is rebuilt, and is blown up by the neighbour Frederick, who has paid for timber with forged banknotes. Boxer, worn out, collapses and is driven away in a knacker's van while Squealer tells the others he died in hospital; the pigs buy a case of whisky. Years pass. The pigs learn to walk on their hind legs and carry whips, the sheep bleat that two legs are better, and one commandment remains: all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. Napoleon restores the name Manor Farm, and at a dinner with the farmer Pilkington the watching animals cannot tell pig from man. Secker and Warburg published the book in London on 17 August 1945.

Plot or Argument

• Chapter 1: Old Major's dream

  Major describes the animals' misery under Man, foretells a rebellion, and teaches them Beasts of England before he dies.

• Chapters 2-3: The Rebellion and the first harvest

  The animals drive out Jones, write the Seven Commandments, and bring in a record harvest, while the pigs begin to keep the milk and apples.

• Chapter 4: The Battle of the Cowshed

  Jones and his men try to recapture the farm; Snowball's tactics and Boxer's strength win the day, and both are decorated as Animal Heroes.

• Chapter 5: Snowball's expulsion

  Mollie deserts for a life of ribbons and sugar; Snowball and Napoleon quarrel over the windmill until Napoleon's dogs chase Snowball off the farm.

• Chapters 6-7: The windmill, the farmhouse and the purge

  The animals labour on the windmill, the pigs move into the farmhouse, the storm-wrecked mill is blamed on Snowball, the hens rebel over their eggs, and confessed traitors are executed.

• Chapter 8: Frederick and the Battle of the Windmill

  Napoleon sells timber for forged money, Frederick's men blow up the windmill, and the pigs discover whisky as the commandments change once more.

• Chapter 9: Boxer's end

  Napoleon becomes President of the new Republic, Moses the raven returns, and Boxer collapses and is sold to the knacker.

• Chapter 10: Pigs and men

  Years later the pigs walk upright, the commandments shrink to one, the farm is renamed Manor Farm, and pigs and humans become indistinguishable over a card game.

Characters

• Old Major, prophet of the Rebellion

  Aged prize Middle White boar whose dream and speech inspire the revolt.

• Napoleon, leader

  Large, fierce Berkshire boar who seizes power with his dogs and rules as dictator.

• Snowball, rival leader

  Brilliant, energetic pig who plans the windmill, is driven out, and is blamed for every setback.

• Squealer, propagandist

  Small, fat, persuasive pig who explains away every change in policy.

• Boxer, cart-horse

  Enormous, loyal worker who believes Napoleon is always right and is sold to the knacker.

• Clover, cart-horse

  Motherly mare who senses that the farm has betrayed its ideals but cannot put it into words.

• Benjamin, donkey

  Old, cynical donkey who can read but refuses to take sides.

• Mollie, mare

  Vain white mare who leaves the farm for sugar and ribbons.

• Moses, raven

  Jones's pet raven who tells of Sugarcandy Mountain, the animals' heaven.

• Mr. Jones, farmer

  Drunken, neglectful owner of Manor Farm driven out in the Rebellion.

• Mr. Pilkington, neighbouring farmer

  Easy-going gentleman farmer of Foxwood who toasts Napoleon at the end.

• Mr. Frederick, neighbouring farmer

  Hard, shrewd owner of Pinchfield who cheats Napoleon and attacks the farm.

• The sheep, chorus

  Flock taught to bleat slogans that drown out debate.

Lessons

• Words bent to serve power

  The Seven Commandments are never openly repealed; Squealer simply adds a few words at night and tells the animals they misremembered. Orwell shows that a people who cannot read, remember and argue can be ruled by whoever controls the wording of their laws and the story of their past.

  • How does each commandment change, and who changes it?
  • Why do the animals believe Squealer when he says they remember wrongly?
  • What could the animals have done to protect their own memory?

• Boxer's loyalty

  Boxer is the most admirable animal on the farm, and his two maxims, that he will work harder and that Napoleon is always right, are what doom him. The book honours his strength and goodness while showing that faithfulness without judgment can be used by the unscrupulous.

  • What is good in Boxer, and what is missing?
  • Why does Boxer hesitate only once, when Squealer rewrites Snowball's part in the Battle of the Cowshed?
  • Who is most responsible for Boxer's fate?

• The silent onlooker

  Benjamin can read as well as any pig and sees what is happening, but he refuses to speak until the van comes for Boxer, when it is too late. The fable asks what a clear-sighted person owes to those who cannot see.

  • Why does Benjamin keep his opinions to himself for so long?
  • Would it have changed anything if Benjamin had spoken earlier?

• How revolutions are betrayed

  Major's dream is of a farm where no animal rules another, yet within a few years the pigs live as Jones did. Orwell traces the steps: special portions explained as necessities, a private force of dogs, a rival made into a scapegoat, public confessions and a cult of the leader.

  • At what point could the Rebellion still have been saved?
  • Why does Orwell begin the pigs' special treatment with something as small as milk and apples?
  • Is the problem the pigs, the system, or the other animals' willingness to follow?

Context

Orwell wrote Animal Farm as a satire on the Russian Revolution and the rule of Stalin, at a moment when the Soviet Union was Britain's ally against Germany and criticism of it was unwelcome in the British press. Major's dream recalls the teachings of Marx and Lenin; Napoleon and Snowball follow the rivalry of Stalin and Trotsky; the confessions and executions recall the Moscow show trials of the 1930s; Frederick's treachery suggests the Nazi-Soviet pact and the German invasion; and the closing dinner has often been read as the wartime conferences of the great powers. Orwell, a democratic socialist who had seen Communist suppression of rival socialist parties in Spain, wanted to show what had become of the Soviet promise.

Composition

Orwell wrote the book between November 1943 and February 1944 while literary editor of Tribune. Victor Gollancz declined it; Jonathan Cape accepted it and then withdrew after advice from an official at the Ministry of Information; T. S. Eliot at Faber and Faber turned it down as well. Secker and Warburg published it on 17 August 1945 with the subtitle A Fairy Story, and Harcourt, Brace issued it in New York in 1946. Orwell's preface on literary censorship, The Freedom of the Press, was left out of the first edition and first printed in 1972; his 1947 preface to a Ukrainian translation says the idea came to him on seeing a small boy whipping a cart-horse along a lane.

Reception

The first printing sold out quickly, and the American edition, a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, made Orwell famous and secure for the first time. The book was banned in the Soviet bloc, circulated there in translation and underground, and became one of the most widely taught works of political fiction in English. It was adapted as an animated film in 1954 and as a television film in 1999, and Time named it among the hundred best English-language novels since 1923.

Comparisons

• gullivers-travels

  Swift's horse-ruled land of the Houyhnhnms in Book IV and Orwell's farm both use animals to judge human politics, though Swift's horses are rational ideals and Orwell's pigs are men in disguise.

• aesops-fables

  Orwell called his book a fairy story and borrowed the fable's plain style and talking beasts, but where Aesop gives a moral in a line, Orwell builds a whole political history.

• the-republic

  Plato's guardians, set apart to rule for the good of all and told a noble lie, are the ideal the pigs claim to fulfil when Squealer says they keep the milk and apples only to serve the other animals.

• one-day-in-the-life-of-ivan-denisovich

  Solzhenitsyn shows from inside a labour camp the Soviet system that Orwell satirized from outside, and his Ivan Shukhov shares Boxer's dignity in hard work.

• the-screwtape-letters

  Lewis's demon and Orwell's Squealer are both masters of persuasion who corrupt by redefining words and blurring memory, written within three years of each other in wartime England.

• fahrenheit-451

  Both books show rulers erasing the record so the ruled cannot compare the present with the past; Bradbury's firemen burn books, Orwell's pigs repaint the barn wall.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The barn wall. Note the wording of each commandment when it is first painted in Chapter 2 and every later change, and who is found at night with a ladder and paint pot in Chapter 8.
• Each of Squealer's speeches, and the question he keeps asking the animals: surely none of you wishes to see Jones back?
• The milk and the apples in Chapter 3, the first extra share the pigs take and the first that Squealer explains.
• Boxer's two sayings and when he adds the second, and the one moment when he doubts Squealer's version of the past.
• Benjamin's refusals to give an opinion, and the moment in Chapter 9 when he finally reads aloud the words on the van.

Key terms and names

Animalism

The system of thought the pigs work out from Major's teaching after his death. Its principles are summed up in the Seven Commandments.

The Seven Commandments

The unalterable laws painted on the barn wall after the Rebellion. Each one that the pigs break is later found to read a little differently.

Beasts of England

The revolutionary song Major remembers from his mother's time and teaches the animals. Napoleon later bans it as no longer needed.

Sugarcandy Mountain

The happy country above the clouds where Moses the raven says animals go when they die. The pigs first scorn the tale and later let Moses stay and give him beer.

The windmill

Snowball's plan to give the farm electric light and a short working week, opposed by Napoleon, then built three times by the animals under Napoleon. In the end it is used for milling corn for profit.

Knacker

A horse slaughterer who buys worn-out animals for their hides and bones. Major warns that Man will send Boxer to the knacker, and in Chapter 9 the prophecy is fulfilled under the pigs.

Animal Hero, First Class

The decoration given to Snowball and Boxer after the Battle of the Cowshed. Napoleon later awards himself a similar honour, and Snowball's medal is written out of the story.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What does Major tell the animals about their lives in Chapter 1, and what does he warn them never to do once Man is gone?
2. Comprehension How does Napoleon drive Snowball off the farm in Chapter 5, and where did the dogs come from?
3. Comprehension What happens to Boxer in Chapter 9, and what does Squealer tell the animals afterward?
4. Interpretation Why does Orwell make the sheep, rather than the pigs, the ones who interrupt every debate with slogans?
5. Interpretation Clover, looking down over the farm after the executions in Chapter 7, knows something has gone wrong but cannot find the words. What has she lost, and why can she not say it?
6. Interpretation Moses the raven is mocked by the pigs at first and welcomed back later. What does his return say about how Napoleon uses the hope of heaven?
7. Interpretation At the end the animals look from pig to man and cannot tell them apart. Is this ending a defeat for Major's dream, or proof that the dream was mistaken from the beginning?
8. Big Question Can any community be governed justly if most of its members cannot read, remember or argue? What do free people owe one another to keep power honest?

Faith Connections

• 1 Samuel 8:10-18 (Scripture)

  Samuel warns Israel that a king will take their sons, their fields and the best of their flocks for himself and his servants. The pigs take the milk, the apples, the farmhouse and finally the produce of every animal's labour, as Samuel foretold of kings.

• Mark 10:42-45 (Scripture)

  Jesus says the rulers of the nations lord it over their subjects, but whoever would be great among His disciples must be servant of all. Squealer claims the pigs rule as servants of the farm, which makes Christ's standard a useful test of every advantage they take.

• Isaiah 5:20 (Scripture)

  The prophet pronounces woe on those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light. Squealer's speeches do exactly this, turning Snowball's courage into treachery and the knacker's van into a hospital.

• Augustine, City of God IV.4 (Church Fathers)

  Augustine asks what kingdoms are, once justice is removed, but great robberies. By the last chapter Napoleon's republic is a robbery dressed as a state, and the book can be read as a fable on Augustine's question.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: The animals overthrow Jones in the name of equality, but they leave the work of thinking to the pigs. Whoever controls thought controls the record: the pigs rewrite the commandments, the history of the Battle of the Cowshed and the fate of Boxer, and the other animals cannot check them. Power that cannot be checked by memory, reading and debate is always abused. Therefore a revolution that does not keep its people able to remember and argue ends by restoring the tyranny it overthrew, as the final dinner with Pilkington shows.

Rhetorical device: allegory. Each figure and event stands for a part of Soviet history: Major for the founders of the revolution, Napoleon and Snowball for Stalin and Trotsky, the executions of Chapter 7 for the show trials, Frederick's forged banknotes and attack in Chapter 8 for Germany's broken pact and invasion.

Debate: Resolved: Benjamin is more to blame for the fate of Animal Farm than Boxer.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Squealer never uses force; Napoleon's dogs do that. Using at least three of Squealer's speeches, argue whether persuasion or terror was more important in keeping the pigs in power.

Comparison with The Screwtape Letters: Screwtape and Squealer both work by changing what words mean. Compare the methods of Lewis's demon with those of Orwell's propagandist, and argue what each book suggests is the best defence against them.

Medical Lens

The fable's medical material serves its politics. Jones's drinking begins the story, and the pigs' discovery of his whisky in Chapter 8 produces a comic scene of a hangover that the farm is told is the Leader's mortal illness, followed by a commandment amended to forbid drinking only to excess. Hunger runs through the middle chapters: rations are cut in the winter of famine while the outside world is told the farm is thriving, and the hens who resist the sale of their eggs are starved until nine of them die. Boxer's story is the book's account of old age and the body used up by labour: his split hoof, his lung trouble, the retirement pension Major once promised and the farm never pays, and the van of the horse slaughterer that Squealer explains away as a hospital transport. The lie about Boxer's care in a Willingdon hospital is a pointed picture of a regime that speaks the language of medicine while selling the sick. These are fable-level details, not clinical ones.

• Chapter 1

  Major tells the animals that Man will send the old horses to the knacker and that he himself has lived long only by luck.

  Aging Senescence Death Dying
• Chapter 7

  The winter of famine, the concealed shortage, and the hens' resistance ended by stopping their rations until nine hens die.

  Starvation Nutrition
• Chapter 8

  The pigs find a case of whisky; Napoleon's hangover is announced as a dying illness, and the commandment against alcohol is quietly amended.

  Alcohol
• Chapter 9

  Boxer's split hoof and failing lungs, his collapse at the windmill, and his removal in the horse slaughterer's van while Squealer describes a hospital.

  Aging Senescence Pain Medical Ethics Death Dying

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Trace every change to the Seven Commandments and argue which single alteration marks the real end of the Rebellion.

• Fiction

  Write the speech Benjamin might have given to the animals on the day the van came for Boxer, had he spoken a year earlier.

• Classroom

  Build a two-column chart setting events in the book beside the events of Soviet history they satirize, and mark where Orwell changes the history to suit the fable.

• Dialogue

  Write an exchange between Clover and Squealer in which Clover tries to remember the original wording of the fourth commandment.

Further Reading

• Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

• Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell

  Orwell's account of the Spanish Civil War, where he first saw political lying at close range.

• George Orwell: A Life, Bernard Crick

• Why Orwell Matters, Christopher Hitchens

• Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler

  Koestler's 1940 novel of the Moscow show trials, which Orwell discussed in his essay on Koestler.