Animal Farm Sparknotes

Plot Overview
SUMMARY PLOT OVERVIEW
Old Major, a prize-winning boar, gathers the animals of the Manor Farm for a
meeting in the big barn. He tells them of a dream he has had in which all
animals live together with no human beings to oppress or control them. He
tells the animals that they must work toward such a paradise and teaches
them a song called “Beasts of England,” in which his dream vision is lyrically
described. The animals greet Major’s vision with great enthusiasm. When he
dies only three nights after the meeting, three younger pigs—Snowball,
Napoleon, and Squealer—formulate his main principles into a philosophy
called Animalism. Late one night, the animals manage to defeat the farmer
Mr. Jones in a battle, running him off the land. They rename the property
Animal Farm and dedicate themselves to achieving Major’s dream. The cart-
horse Boxer devotes himself to the cause with particular zeal, committing his
great strength to the prosperity of the farm and adopting as a personal maxim
the affirmation “I will work harder.”

At first, Animal Farm prospers. Snowball works at teaching the animals to

read, and Napoleon takes a group of young puppies to educate them in the
principles of Animalism. When Mr. Jones reappears to take back his farm, the
animals defeat him again, in what comes to be known as the Battle of the
Cowshed, and take the farmer’s abandoned gun as a token of their victory. As
time passes, however, Napoleon and Snowball increasingly quibble over the
future of the farm, and they begin to struggle with each other for power and
influence among the other animals. Snowball concocts a scheme to build an
electricity-generating windmill, but Napoleon solidly opposes the plan. At the
meeting to vote on whether to take up the project, Snowball gives a
passionate speech. Although Napoleon gives only a brief retort, he then
makes a strange noise, and nine attack dogs—the puppies that Napoleon had
confiscated in order to “educate”—burst into the barn and chase Snowball
from the farm. Napoleon assumes leadership of Animal Farm and declares
that there will be no more meetings. From that point on, he asserts, the pigs
alone will make all of the decisions—for the good of every animal.

Napoleon now quickly changes his mind about the windmill, and the animals,
especially Boxer, devote their efforts to completing it. One day, after a storm,
the animals find the windmill toppled. The human farmers in the area declare
smugly that the animals made the walls too thin, but Napoleon claims that
Snowball returned to the farm to sabotage the windmill. He stages a great
purge, during which various animals who have allegedly participated in
Snowball’s great conspiracy—meaning any animal who opposes Napoleon’s
uncontested leadership—meet instant death at the teeth of the attack dogs.
With his leadership unquestioned (Boxer has taken up a second maxim,
“Napoleon is always right”), Napoleon begins expanding his powers, rewriting
history to make Snowball a villain. Napoleon also begins to act more and
more like a human being—sleeping in a bed, drinking whisky, and engaging in
trade with neighboring farmers. The original Animalist principles strictly
forbade such activities, but Squealer, Napoleon’s propagandist, justifies every
action to the other animals, convincing them that Napoleon is a great leader
and is making things better for everyone—despite the fact that the common
animals are cold, hungry, and overworked.

Mr. Frederick, a neighboring farmer, cheats Napoleon in the purchase of

some timber and then attacks the farm and dynamites the windmill, which had
been rebuilt at great expense. After the demolition of the windmill, a pitched
battle ensues, during which Boxer receives major wounds. The animals rout
the farmers, but Boxer’s injuries weaken him. When he later falls while
working on the windmill, he senses that his time has nearly come. One day,
Boxer is nowhere to be found. According to Squealer, Boxer has died in
peace after having been taken to the hospital, praising the Rebellion with his
last breath. In actuality, Napoleon has sold his most loyal and long-suffering
worker to a glue maker in order to get money for whisky.

Years pass on Animal Farm, and the pigs become more and more like human
beings—walking upright, carrying whips, and wearing clothes. Eventually, the
seven principles of Animalism, known as the Seven Commandments and
inscribed on the side of the barn, become reduced to a single principle
reading “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Napoleon entertains a human farmer named Mr. Pilkington at a dinner and
declares his intent to ally himself with the human farmers against the laboring
classes of both the human and animal communities. He also changes the
name of Animal Farm back to the Manor Farm, claiming that this title is the
“correct” one. Looking in at the party of elites through the farmhouse window,
the common animals can no longer tell which are the pigs and which are the
human beings.

Five Key Questions

1) Why is Animal Farm an allegory?
An allegory is a story in which the events and characters stand for
something besides themselves. The characters and events
of Animal Farm represent the real people and events of the Russian
Revolution and its aftermath. Orwell wrote Animal Farm because he
wanted to tell the true story of the Russian Revolution in a way
anyone could understand, even if they didn’t know all the historical
details. However, Animal Farm is not only an allegory of Russian
history. The novella also makes a broader argument about political
power and oppression in general.

2) What is Animalism?
Napoleon, Snowball and Squealer develop Old Major’s idea that animals have
a right to freedom and equality into “a complete system of thought” (Chapter
2) which they call Animalism. The central beliefs of Animalism are expressed
in the Seven Commandments, painted on the wall of the big barn. However,
as the pigs seize more and more power, they change the Commandments
painted on the barn, until Animalism is reduced to a single principle which is
virtually the opposite of Old Major’s original idea: “All animals are equal but
some animals are more equal than others” (Chapter 10).

3) How does Napoleon seize power?

Napoleon trains a litter of puppies to be loyal to him: when they are fully
grown, he uses the dogs to chase Snowball, his main rival, off the farm.
Napoleon justifies his takeover by telling the other animals that Snowball was
a traitor secretly working for the human farmers. Squealer makes confusing
and manipulative arguments to convince most of the animals that Napoleon is
telling the truth, while fear of Napoleon’s dogs keeps any doubters from
speaking out.

4) What does Boxer represent?

Within Animal Farm’s allegory of Soviet history, Boxer represents the Russian
working class. Boxer does most of the work on the farm, and his strength and
size give him a great deal of power. However, he is illiterate and trusting,
which makes it easy for the pigs to trick him into submitting to their leadership.
Orwell believed that something similar had happened to the Russian working
class during the Soviet Revolution: the workers were powerful, and did all the
work in the Soviet Union, but they were tricked and betrayed by Russian
intellectuals.

5) How does Mr. Frederick trick Napoleon?

Mr. Frederick agrees to pay a high price for Animal Farm’s timber, and
encourages Napoleon to insult Mr. Pilkington. Knowing that the animals are
not familiar with money, Frederick pays for the timber in forged banknotes.
When the forgery is discovered, Frederick attacks Animal Farm and destroys
the windmill. The insulted Mr. Pilkington refuses to help the animals defend
their farm. This sequence of events roughly parallels the relations between
 Stalin’s Soviet Union (Napoleon), Nazi Germany (Frederick), and the United
Kingdom (Pilkington) during the Second World War.

What Does the Ending Mean?

SUMMARY WHAT DOES THE E

At the end of Animal Farm, Pilkington and other human farmers come to eat
dinner with the pigs at the farmhouse. As the other animals watch through the
window, they find they are unable to tell pigs and humans apart. The pigs
have started to dress and behave exactly like humans. The book’s final image
expresses the animals’ realization that the pigs have become as cruel and
oppressive as human farmers. The ending also makes the argument that
political power is always the same, whoever has it and whatever ideology is
used to justify it. Powerful people are cruel and selfish whether they’re pigs or
humans, Communists or capitalists. Above all, the ending suggests that all
powerful people are liars and manipulators. In our last glimpse of the dinner
party, Mr. Pilkington and Napoleon are arguing because they have both tried
to cheat at a card game in the same way at the same time. The ending
doesn’t offer much hope for a workable political system with true equality for
all. Rather, the ending posits that the corrupting nature of power dooms all
political systems to failure.

Themes
 Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a
literary work.

The Corruption of Socialist Ideals in the Soviet Union

Animal Farm is most famous in the West as a stinging critique of the history
and rhetoric of the Russian Revolution. Retelling the story of the emergence
and development of Soviet communism in the form of an animal fable, Animal
Farm allegorizes the rise to power of the dictator Joseph Stalin. In the novella,
the overthrow of the human oppressor Mr. Jones by a democratic coalition of
animals quickly gives way to the consolidation of power among the pigs. Much
like the Soviet intelligentsia, the pigs establish themselves as the ruling class
in the new society.
The struggle for preeminence between Leon Trotsky and Stalin emerges in
the rivalry between the pigs Snowball and Napoleon. In both the historical and
fictional cases, the idealistic but politically less powerful figure (Trotsky and
Snowball) is expelled from the revolutionary state by the malicious and violent
usurper of power (Stalin and Napoleon). The purges and show trials with
which Stalin eliminated his enemies and solidified his political base find
expression in Animal Farm as the false confessions and executions of
animals whom Napoleon distrusts following the collapse of the windmill.
Stalin’s tyrannical rule and eventual abandonment of the founding principles
of the Russian Revolution are represented by the pigs’ turn to violent
government and the adoption of human traits and behaviors, the trappings of
their original oppressors.
Although Orwell believed strongly in socialist ideals, he felt that the Soviet
Union realized these ideals in a terribly perverse form. His novella creates its
most powerful ironies in the moments in which Orwell depicts the corruption of
Animalist ideals by those in power. For Animal Farm serves not so much to
condemn tyranny or despotism as to indict the horrifying hypocrisy of
tyrannies that base themselves on, and owe their initial power to, ideologies of
liberation and equality. The gradual disintegration and perversion of the
Seven Commandments illustrates this hypocrisy with vivid force, as do
Squealer’s elaborate philosophical justifications for the pigs’ blatantly
unprincipled actions. Thus, the novella critiques the violence of the Stalinist
regime against the human beings it ruled, and also points to Soviet
communism’s violence against human logic, language, and ideals.

The Societal Tendency Toward Class Stratification

Animal Farm offers commentary on the development of class tyranny and the
human tendency to maintain and reestablish class structures even in societies
that allegedly stand for total equality. The novella illustrates how classes that
are initially unified in the face of a common enemy, as the animals are against
the humans, may become internally divided when that enemy is eliminated.
The expulsion of Mr. Jones creates a power vacuum, and it is only so long
before the next oppressor assumes totalitarian control. The natural division
between intellectual and physical labor quickly comes to express itself as a
new set of class divisions, with the “brainworkers” (as the pigs claim to be)
using their superior intelligence to manipulate society to their own benefit.
Orwell never clarifies in Animal Farm whether this negative state of affairs
constitutes an inherent aspect of society or merely an outcome contingent on
the integrity of a society’s intelligentsia. In either case, the novella points to
the force of this tendency toward class stratification in many communities and
the threat that it poses to democracy and freedom.

The Danger of a Naïve Working Class

One of the novella’s most impressive accomplishments is its portrayal not just
of the figures in power but also of the oppressed people themselves. Animal
Farm is not told from the perspective of any particular character, though
occasionally it does slip into Clover’s consciousness. Rather, the story is told
from the perspective of the common animals as a whole. Gullible, loyal, and
hardworking, these animals give Orwell a chance to sketch how situations of
oppression arise not only from the motives and tactics of the oppressors but
also from the naïveté of the oppressed, who are not necessarily in a position
to be better educated or informed. When presented with a dilemma, Boxer
prefers not to puzzle out the implications of various possible actions but
instead to repeat to himself, “Napoleon is always right.” Animal
Farm demonstrates how the inability or unwillingness to question authority
condemns the working class to suffer the full extent of the ruling class’s
oppression.

The Abuse of Language as Instrumental to the Abuse of Power

One of Orwell’s central concerns, both in Animal Farm and in 1984, is the way
in which language can be manipulated as an instrument of control. In Animal
Farm, the pigs gradually twist and distort a rhetoric of socialist revolution to
justify their behavior and to keep the other animals in the dark. The animals
heartily embrace Major’s visionary ideal of socialism, but after Major dies, the
pigs gradually twist the meaning of his words. As a result, the other animals
seem unable to oppose the pigs without also opposing the ideals of the
Rebellion. By the end of the novella, after Squealer’s repeated
reconfigurations of the Seven Commandments in order to decriminalize the
pigs’ treacheries, the main principle of the farm can be openly stated as “all
animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” This
outrageous abuse of the word “equal” and of the ideal of equality in general
typifies the pigs’ method, which becomes increasingly audacious as the novel
progresses. Orwell’s sophisticated exposure of this abuse of language
remains one of the most compelling and enduring features of Animal
Farm, worthy of close study even after we have decoded its allegorical
characters and events.

Corruption
Animal Farm demonstrates the idea that power always corrupts. The
novella’s heavy use of foreshadowing, especially in the opening chapter,
creates the sense that the events of the story are unavoidable. Not only is
Napoleon’s rise to power inevitable, the novella strongly suggests that any
other possible ruler would have been just as bad as Napoleon. Although
Napoleon is more power-hungry than Snowball, plenty of evidence exists to
suggest that Snowball would have been just as corrupt a ruler. Before his
expulsion, Snowball goes along with the pigs’ theft of milk and apples, and the
disastrous windmill is his idea. Even Old Major is not incorruptible. Despite his
belief that “all animals are equal,” (Chapter 1) he lectures the other animals
from a raised platform, suggesting he may actually view himself as above the
other animals on the farm. In the novel’s final image the pigs become
indistinguishable from human farmers, which hammers home the idea that
power inevitably has the same effect on anyone who wields it.

The Failure of Intellect

Animal Farm is deeply skeptical about the value of intellectual activity. The
pigs are identified as the most intelligent animals, but their intelligence rarely
produces anything of value. Instead, the pigs use their intelligence to
manipulate and abuse the other animals. The novella identifies several other
ways in which intelligence fails to be useful or good. Benjamin is literate, but
he refuses to read, suggesting that intelligence is worthless without the moral
sense to engage in politics and the courage to act. The dogs are nearly as
literate as the pigs, but they are “not interested in reading anything except the
Seven Commandments” (Chapter 3). The dogs’ use of their intelligence
suggests that intellect is useless—even harmful—when it is combined with a
personality that prefers to obey orders rather than question them.

The Exploitation of Animals by Humans

As well as being an allegory of the ways human exploit and oppress one
another, Animal Farm also makes a more literal argument: humans exploit
and oppress animals. While the animals’ rebellion is mostly comic in tone, it
ends on a serious and touching note, when the animals “wipe out the last
traces of Jones’s hated reign. The harness-room at the end of the stables was
broken open; the bits, the nose-rings, the dog-chains, the cruel knives with
which Mr. Jones had been used to castrate the pigs and lambs, were all flung
down the well” (Chapter 2). The novella also suggests that there is a real
connection, as well as an allegorical one, between the exploitation of animals
and the exploitation of human workers. Mr. Pilkington jokes to Napoleon: “If
you have your lower animals to contend with […] we have our lower classes!”
(Chapter 10). From the point of view of the ruling class, animals and workers
are the same.

Protagonist
MAIN IDEAS PROTAGONIST

The animals, as a group, are the protagonists of Animal Farm. Their goal is to
achieve the vision set out by Old Major: equality and freedom for all animals.
This goal brings them into conflict with the reality of political power. First they
must confront power by rebelling against Mr. Jones. Later they must confront
power in a more subtle and dangerous form: the manipulation and deceit of
the pigs. While the animals defeat Mr. Jones easily, they are completely
fooled by the pigs. By the time the animals recognize that the pigs are
stopping them achieving their goal, it is too late. The pigs are in a position to
kill any animals who continue to fight for their goal. By the end of the novella,
the animals cannot even sing “Beasts of England,” the song that expressed
their dream of equality and freedom. In the story’s last moments, the animals
finally realize what they have been up against. By defeating their human
farmer, they have not defeated the reality of political power. They have only
exchanged one set of rulers for another, identical set.
 Antagonist
The animals’ antagonist is the corrupting reality of political power. This
abstract idea is embodied by the different characters who wield power at
different times. At first, the corruption of political power is embodied in the
cruel, lazy Mr. Jones. When Mr. Jones is defeated, the Farm’s new rulers, the
pigs, gradually come to embody the reality of political power. Now it is the pigs
who oppose the animals, in exactly the same way as Jones did, by exploiting
and oppressing them. From the beginning of the novella, the animals’ defeat
by the power embodied in the pigs is heavily foreshadowed. Much of the
novella’s drama arises from the question of whether, and when, the animals
will recognize that their true antagonist is not humans or pigs but power itself.
The moment of reckoning comes in the novel’s final scene, when the animals
see that the pigs and the humans are exactly alike, because they are equally
corrupted by political power.

Setting
The Manor Farm—later called Animal Farm—is a small, independent farm
somewhere in the English countryside. The name “Manor Farm” tells us that it
was once owned by a local aristocrat, the lord of the manor. However, the
farm has since come into the hands of Mr. Jones, an unsuccessful, lazy,
drunken farmer. Within the novella’s allegory, the Manor Farm represents
Russia and also the countries of Europe more generally: places once ruled by
aristocrats, now ruled by capitalists, and ripe for a Communist revolution.
However, the Englishness of the Manor Farm is also important. Small,
independent farms are a treasured part of the British national self-image,
emblems of the coziness and tranquility of English political life. By imagining
such a farm undergoing a revolution, Animal Farm suggests that the
corruption and bloodshed of Stalinism is much closer to home than British
readers may realize.

Symbols
 Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent
abstract ideas or concepts.

Animal Farm
Animal Farm, known at the beginning and the end of the novel as the Manor
Farm, symbolizes Russia and the Soviet Union under Communist Party rule.
But more generally, Animal Farm stands for any human society, be it
capitalist, socialist, fascist, or communist. It possesses the internal structure of
a nation, with a government (the pigs), a police force or army (the dogs), a
working class (the other animals), and state holidays and rituals. Its location
amid a number of hostile neighboring farms supports its symbolism as a
political entity with diplomatic concerns.

The Barn
The barn at Animal Farm, on whose outside walls the pigs paint the Seven
Commandments and, later, their revisions, represents the collective memory
of a modern nation. The many scenes in which the ruling-class pigs alter the
principles of Animalism and in which the working-class animals puzzle over
but accept these changes represent the way an institution in power can revise
a community’s concept of history to bolster its control. If the working class
believes history to lie on the side of their oppressors, they are less likely to
question oppressive practices. Moreover, the oppressors, by revising their
nation’s conception of its origins and development, gain control of the nation’s
very identity, and the oppressed soon come to depend upon the authorities for
their communal sense of self.

The Windmill
The great windmill symbolizes the pigs’ manipulation of the other animals for
their own gain. Despite the immediacy of the need for food and warmth, the
pigs exploit Boxer and the other common animals by making them undertake
backbreaking labor to build the windmill, which will ultimately earn the pigs
more money and thus increase their power. The pigs’ declaration that
Snowball is responsible for the windmill’s first collapse constitutes
psychological manipulation, as it prevents the common animals from doubting
the pigs’ abilities and unites them against a supposed enemy. The ultimate
conversion of the windmill to commercial use is one more sign of the pigs’
betrayal of their fellow animals. From an allegorical point of view, the windmill
represents the enormous modernization projects undertaken in Soviet Russia
after the Russian Revolution.

Genre
M Animal Farm is an animal fable—or beast fable—because it uses animal
characters to make a concise, forceful argument about human morality and
politics. Throughout European history, writers from Aesop to Jean de la
Fontaine have used animal fables as a way of criticizing their own societies
under the cover of a “harmless” story about animals. For example, Aesop’s
Fables are simple stories about creatures such as mice, geese, and frogs.
The stories end with clear moral lessons that are applicable to daily life. By
drawing on the animal fable’s tradition of social criticism, Animal
Farm critiques Orwell’s own English society as well as Soviet totalitarianism.
Traditionally, fables rarely include more than one human character, but Orwell
subverts this convention. By including several human farmers in his fable,
Orwell reminds his readers that the exploitation and oppression of animals is
not just a literary metaphor for the exploitation and oppression of human
beings. The exploitation of animals really happens and relies on the same
process as the exploitation of humans.

Style
The style of Animal Farm is simple and clear. The novella’s language is
concrete, factual and delivered in short sentences. The simplicity of style
culminates at the novella’s end, in one-sentence paragraphs: “It was a pig
walking on his hind legs.[…] He carried a whip in his trotter” (Chapter 10). The
simplicity and clarity of the novella’s style contrasts with the way Animal
Farm’s characters use language. Throughout the book, characters use
language in deceptive ways for political purposes. Some characters make
their language complex in order to deceive, like Squealer when he is
explaining Napoleon’s actions. Other characters use simplistic language to
distort the truth, like the sheep with their slogan, “Four legs good, two legs
bad.” Alongside these examples of deceptive language, Orwell’s own writing
style offers a constant reminder that truth can be conveyed in straightforward
language anyone can understand. The strong contrast between the
plainspoken style of the novel and the manipulative styles adopted by
characters who want to seize power illuminates the difference between
truthful language and political deception.
A notable feature of Animal Farm’s style is the use of the passive voice. For
instance, when Napoleon steals the cows’ milk, we are not told which
character or characters notice that the milk is missing. Instead we are told that
“it was noticed that the milk had disappeared” (Chapter 2). The use of the
passive voice emphasizes the animals’ helplessness: events occur without
any particular animal taking action, creating the impression that things happen
without the animals’ consent. The passive voice also helps to show the power
of rumor and false information in an oppressive society. When no one knows
exactly who said, did or “noticed” something, it’s easy to claim that the thing
didn’t really happen, or that it happened differently, and this is exactly what
the pigs do.
 Point of View

Animal Farm is told from a collective limited third-person point of view
sometimes known as “village voice.” The narrator knows everything the
animals see, say, know and do as a group. The narrator does not know what
the pigs say and do when they are apart from the other animals, and we rarely
see the action through the eyes of individual animals. Occasionally, the reader
is granted brief glimpses of an animal’s individual point of view, most often
Clover’s, because Clover and Boxer are the heart of the animal group. The
collective point of view focuses our sympathy on the hopes and fears the
animals share as a political unit or class, rather than individual characters.
The collective point of view also shows how easily collective memory can be
manipulated. Individual animals might remember what really happened at the
Battle of the Cowshed, but because readers don’t have access to individual
points of view, they can’t know for certain. Instead, readers only know what
the animals say they remember. When the pigs make it dangerous to tell the
truth, then the false version of the Battle is accepted, even by the narrator, as
the “true” collective memory, and it no longer matters whether individual
animals remember something different.
The collective point of view also creates deep ironies in Animal Farm. While
the story is told from the simple, trusting point of view of the animals, the
reader is consistently reminded that their perspective is very limited. The
effect can be comic, chilling, or sad, and sometimes all three at once. For
instance, when Napoleon takes the cows’ milk for the pigs, all the readers are
told is that when the animals “came back in the evening it was noticed that the
milk had disappeared” (Chapter 2). The irony here comes from the gap
between what the animals see—that the milk is missing—and what the reader
sees: that Napoleon has taken it. The animals’ trust is heartbreaking, because
we see how easily they will be betrayed. Their trust is also chilling—the reader
can see that the pigs’ treachery is going to deepen. Animal Farm’s irony
serves a direct political purpose. By emphasizing the gap between what the
Farm’s inhabitants see going on and what the readers see as outsiders, the
book invites readers to look at their own society with outsiders’ eyes.

Tone
MAIN IDEAS TONE

The tone of Animal Farm is initially playful and lighthearted, but it becomes
bitter as the story unfolds. The story begins with a tone suggesting the reader
is embarking on a superficially silly story about ridiculous humans and talking
animals. The description of both the humans and animals suggests a
bemused, detached attitude toward the story. Orwell anthropomorphizes the
animals, which is to say he not only gives them the ability to speak, but gives
them human qualities and concerns. For example, Clover the horse “never
quite got her figure back after her fourth foal” (Chapter 1). The concern with
physical appearance makes Clover seem like a foolish woman. However, as
Napoleon’s regime worsens, chilling notes creep in. This bitterness is all the
more striking because it is embedded in an otherwise playful story. The
progression from playfulness to disturbing bitterness warns readers that
however cozy life seems, society can easily collapse into horror and
bloodshed. At the same time, by making a silly, playful, fun story out of the
horrifying events of Stalin’s Terror, the novella also makes fun of Stalin,
suggesting that ultimately the Soviet dictator is as laughable as a talking pig.

Foreshadowing
Animal Farm makes heavy use of foreshadowing. Most of the plot’s main
events are foreshadowed in the opening chapter. This foreshadowing
emphasizes the inevitability of what happens, suggesting that violent
revolution is doomed to fail, and that power always corrupts. Animal Farm’s
foreshadowing also serves to place particular emphasis on the events Orwell
saw as central to the failure of the Russian Revolution, and revolutions
generally. The events most heavily foreshadowed are the different stages of
the farm’s collapse into violence.

Executions
Napoleon’s decision to execute other animals is foreshadowed in Chapter 1,
when Old Major says: “You young porkers who are sitting in front of me, every
one of you will scream your lives out at the block within a year.” This prophecy
comes true, but instead of being killed by Mr. Jones on the butcher’s “block,”
the porkers are killed on Napoleon’s orders on the executioner’s “block.” By
using an example of Mr. Jones’s cruelty to foreshadow Napoleon’s, the
novella argues that the two regimes, human and pig, are essentially the same.

Boxer’s Death
Boxer’s death is foreshadowed in Chapter 7, when Napoleon’s dogs “go quite
mad” and attack Boxer. Although Boxer is unharmed, this incident
foreshadows Napoleon’s decision to have Boxer killed. Boxer’s death is also
foreshadowed by the novella’s many references to the pasture that will be set
apart for retired animals. As the pigs’ treachery unfolds, it becomes clear to
the reader that the retirement pasture will never exist. As a result, every
reference to Boxer’s retirement becomes an ironic foreshadowing of his
betrayal and death. When Boxer himself looks forward to retiring, he is
unwittingly foreshadowing that Napoleon will betray him, which emphasizes
the cruelty of Napoleon’s deception.
 Napoleon’s Treachery
Animal Farm strongly foreshadows that Napoleon and the other pigs will
betray the ideals of the rebellion. From the beginning of the novella, the pigs
take control of Old Major’s ideas and twist them into new shapes: first
“Animalism,” then the simplistic slogan of the sheep: “Four legs good, two legs
bad.” The manipulation of Old Major’s ideas foreshadows the ultimate betrayal
of the rebellion’s goals, when the commandments of Animalism are replaced
by the slogan: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than
others” (Chapter 10). Napoleon’s treachery begins with small deceptions, like
taking all the cows’ milk for the pigs, which foreshadow the bigger deceptions
to come, such as the lie that Boxer has been taken to hospital. Napoleon’s
dogs are threatening from the moment they appear, which foreshadows their
role in the violent oppression that follows.

Key Facts

MAIN IDEAS KEY FACTS
Full Title  · Animal Farm: A Fairy Story
Author  · George Orwell (pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair)
Genre · Dystopian animal fable; satire; allegory; political roman à clef (French
for “novel with a key”—a thinly veiled exposé of factual persons or events)
Language · English
Time And Place Written · 1943–1944, in London
Date Of First Publication · 1946
Publisher · Harcourt Brace & Company
Narrator · Animal Farm is the only work by Orwell in which the author does
not appear conspicuously as a narrator or major character; it is the least
overtly personal of all of his writings. The anonymous narrator of the story is
almost a nonentity, notable for no individual idiosyncrasies or biases.
Point Of View · The story is told from the point of view of the common
animals of Animal Farm, though it refers to them in the third person plural as
“they.”
Tone · For the most part, the tone of the novel is objective, stating external
facts and rarely digressing into philosophical meditations. The mixture of this
tone with the outrageous trajectory of the plot, however, steeps the story in an
ever-mounting irony.
Tense · Past
Setting (Time) · As is the case with most fables, Animal Farm is set in an
unspecified time period and is largely free from historical references that
would allow the reader to date the action precisely. It is fair to assume,
however, that Orwell means the fable to be contemporaneous with the object
of its satire, the Russian Revolution (1917–1945). It is important to remember
that this period represented the recent past and present at the time of writing
and that Orwell understands the significance of the story’s action to be
immediate and ongoing rather than historical.
Setting (Place) · An imaginary farm in England
Protagonist · There is no clear central character in the novel, but Napoleon,
the dictatorial pig, is the figure who drives and ties together most of the action.
Major Conflict · There are a number of conflicts in Animal Farm—the animals
versus Mr. Jones, Snowball versus Napoleon, the common animals versus
the pigs, Animal Farm versus the neighboring humans—but all of them are
expressions of the underlying tension between the exploited and exploiting
classes and between the lofty ideals and harsh realities of socialism.
Rising Action · The animals throw off their human oppressors and establish
a socialist state called Animal Farm; the pigs, being the most intelligent
animals in the group, take control of the planning and government of the farm;
Snowball and Napoleon engage in ideological disputes and compete for
power.
Climax · In Chapter V, Napoleon runs Snowball off the farm with his trained
pack of dogs and declares that the power to make decisions for the farm will
be exercised solely by the pigs.
Falling Action · Squealer emerges to justify Napoleon’s actions with skillful
but duplicitous reinterpretations of Animalist principles; Napoleon continues to
consolidate his power, eliminating his enemies and reinforcing his status as
supreme leader; the common animals continue to obey the pigs, hoping for a
better future.
Themes · The corruption of socialist ideals in the Soviet Union; the societal
tendency toward class stratification; the danger of a naïve working class; the
abuse of language as instrumental to the abuse of power
Motifs · Songs; state ritual
Symbols · Animal Farm; the barn; the windmill
Foreshadowing · The pigs’ eventual abuse of power is foreshadowed at
several points in the novel. At the end of Chapter II, immediately after the
establishment of the supposedly egalitarian Animal Farm, the extra milk taken
from the cows disappears, and the text implies that Napoleon has drunk it
himself. Similarly, the dogs’ attack on Boxer during Napoleon’s purges, in
Chapter VII, foreshadows the pigs’ eventual betrayal of the loyal cart-horse.

Are some animals more equal than

others?
In Animal Farm different species of animals have different abilities and levels
of intelligence. The pigs and dogs are the best at reading and writing, while
Boxer and most of the other animals do not possess the same knowledge.
These differing levels of education are reflected in the hierarchy that
eventually emerges on Animal Farm: pigs and dogs on top, Boxer and the
other “lower animals” below. One interpretation of the disparity in intelligence
among animals is that some species—such as pigs— are destined to rule,
while the lower animals (horses, cows, chickens) are destined to suffer. If this
interpretation is to be believed, then class divisions such as the ones
represented in the novella are natural and inevitable, and the clever—or the
most cunning—will always rise to the top.
On the other hand, Animal Farm shows that the pigs’ intelligence doesn’t
necessarily make them more capable or productive than the other animals.
The pigs’ intelligence rarely produces anything good. Snowball’s biggest idea
—copied by Napoleon—is the windmill, which merely wastes years of the
animals’ time. The pigs’ intelligence is mainly used to manipulate the lower
animals. Squealer uses his skill with words to give cunning explanations for
Napoleon’s lies. Similarly, the only time Napoleon demonstrates intelligence is
in training his dog police force. At the same time, Benjamin and Muriel are as
literate as the pigs but never achieve any power at all. Benjamin and Muriel’s
lack of political power suggests that it is not the pigs’ intelligence alone which
puts them at the top of the hierarchy, but their intelligence combined with their
willingness to abuse others. Animal Farm also suggests that the true source
of power on the Farm may be Boxer. He defeats the human farmers, does
most of the work, produces most of the wealth, and in Chapter 7
demonstrates that he could easily destroy Napoleon’s dogs.