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.

Top 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Verified Quotes

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.

• Chapter 7

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

• 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.

• 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.