Chapter II

T sleep.nights
HREE later old Major died peacefully in his
His body was buried at the foot of the orchard.
This was early in March. During the next three months
there was much secret activity. Major’s speech had given
to the more intelligent animals on the farm a completely
new outlook on life. They did not know when the Re-
bellion predicted by Major would take place, they had
no reason for thinking that it would be within their own
lifetime, but they saw clearly that it was their duty to
prepare for it. The work of teaching and organising the
others fell naturally upon the pigs, who were generally
recognised as being the cleverest of the animals. Pre-

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eminent among the pigs were two young boars named

Snowball and Napoleon, whom Mr. Jones was breeding
up for sale. Napoleon was a large, rather fierce-looking
Berkshire boar, the only Berkshire on the farm, not much
of a talker, but with a reputation for getting his own
way. Snowball was a more vivacious pig than Napoleon,
quicker in speech and more inventive, but was not con-
sidered to have the same depth of character. All the other
male pigs on the farm were porkers. The best known
among them was a small fat pig named Squealer, with
very round cheeks, twinkling eyes, nimble movements,
and a shrill voice. He was a brilliant talker, and when he
was arguing some difficult point he had a way of skip-
ping from side to side and whisking his tail which was
somehow very persuasive. The others said of Squealer
that he could turn black into white.
These three had elaborated old Major’s teachings into a
complete system of thought, to which they gave the name
of Animalism. Several nights a week, after Mr. Jones
was asleep, they held secret meetings in the barn and ex-
pounded the principles of Animalism to the others. At
the beginning they met with much stupidity and apathy.
Some of the animals talked of the duty of loyalty to Mr.
Jones, whom they referred to as “Master,” or made ele-

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 CHAPTER II

mentary remarks such as “Mr. Jones feeds us. If he were

gone, we should starve to death.” Others asked such
questions as “Why should we care what happens after
we are dead?” or “If this Rebellion is to happen anyway,
what difference does it make whether we work for it or
not?”, and the pigs had great difficulty in making them
see that this was contrary to the spirit of Animalism. The
stupidest questions of all were asked by Mollie, the white
mare. The very first question she asked Snowball was:
“Will there still be sugar after the Rebellion?”
“No,” said Snowball firmly. “We have no means of
making sugar on this farm. Besides, you do not need
sugar. You will have all the oats and hay you want.”
“And shall I still be allowed to wear ribbons in my
mane?” asked Mollie.
“Comrade,” said Snowball, “those ribbons that you are
so devoted to are the badge of slavery. Can you not un-
derstand that liberty is worth more than ribbons?”
Mollie agreed, but she did not sound very convinced.
The pigs had an even harder struggle to counteract the
lies put about by Moses, the tame raven. Moses, who
was Mr. Jones’s especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer,
but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of

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the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy

Mountain, to which all animals went when they died. It
was situated somewhere up in the sky, a little distance be-
yond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it
was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all
the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew
on the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told
tales and did no work, but some of them believed in Sug-
arcandy Mountain, and the pigs had to argue very hard
to persuade them that there was no such place.
Their most faithful disciples were the two cart-horses,
Boxer and Clover. These two had great difficulty in think-
ing anything out for themselves, but having once ac-
cepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed every-
thing that they were told, and passed it on to the other an-
imals by simple arguments. They were unfailing in their
attendance at the secret meetings in the barn, and led the
singing of ‘Beasts of England’, with which the meetings
always ended.
Now, as it turned out, the Rebellion was achieved
much earlier and more easily than anyone had expected.
In past years Mr. Jones, although a hard master, had been
a capable farmer, but of late he had fallen on evil days.
He had become much disheartened after losing money

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 CHAPTER II

in a lawsuit, and had taken to drinking more than was

good for him. For whole days at a time he would lounge
in his Windsor chair in the kitchen, reading the newspa-
pers, drinking, and occasionally feeding Moses on crusts
of bread soaked in beer. His men were idle and dishon-
est, the fields were full of weeds, the buildings wanted
roofing, the hedges were neglected, and the animals were
underfed.
June came and the hay was almost ready for cutting.
On Midsummer’s Eve, which was a Saturday, Mr. Jones
went into Willingdon and got so drunk at the Red Lion
that he did not come back till midday on Sunday. The
men had milked the cows in the early morning and then
had gone out rabbiting, without bothering to feed the an-
imals. When Mr. Jones got back he immediately went
to sleep on the drawing-room sofa with the News of the
World over his face, so that when evening came, the an-
imals were still unfed. At last they could stand it no
longer. One of the cows broke in the door of the store-
shed with her horn and all the animals began to help
themselves from the bins. It was just then that Mr. Jones
woke up. The next moment he and his four men were
in the store-shed with whips in their hands, lashing out
in all directions. This was more than the hungry ani-

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 CHAPTER II

mals could bear. With one accord, though nothing of

the kind had been planned beforehand, they flung them-
selves upon their tormentors. Jones and his men sud-
denly found themselves being butted and kicked from all
sides. The situation was quite out of their control. They
had never seen animals behave like this before, and this
sudden uprising of creatures whom they were used to
thrashing and maltreating just as they chose, frightened
them almost out of their wits. After only a moment or
two they gave up trying to defend themselves and took
to their heels. A minute later all five of them were in full
flight down the cart-track that led to the main road, with
the animals pursuing them in triumph.
Mrs. Jones looked out of the bedroom window, saw
what was happening, hurriedly flung a few possessions
into a carpet bag, and slipped out of the farm by an-
other way. Moses sprang off his perch and flapped after
her, croaking loudly. Meanwhile the animals had chased
Jones and his men out on to the road and slammed the
five-barred gate behind them. And so, almost before they
knew what was happening, the Rebellion had been suc-
cessfully carried through: Jones was expelled, and the
Manor Farm was theirs.
For the first few minutes the animals could hardly be-

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 CHAPTER II

lieve in their good fortune. Their first act was to gallop in

a body right round the boundaries of the farm, as though
to make quite sure that no human being was hiding any-
where upon it; then they raced back to the farm build-
ings to 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. The
reins, the halters, the blinkers, the degrading nosebags,
were thrown on to the rubbish fire which was burning
in the yard. So were the whips. All the animals capered
with joy when they saw the whips going up in flames.
Snowball also threw on to the fire the ribbons with which
the horses’ manes and tails had usually been decorated
on market days.
“Ribbons,” he said, “should be considered as clothes,
which are the mark of a human being. All animals should
go naked.”
When Boxer heard this he fetched the small straw hat
which he wore in summer to keep the flies out of his ears,
and flung it on to the fire with the rest.
In a very little while the animals had destroyed every-

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 CHAPTER II

thing that reminded them of Mr. Jones. Napoleon then

led them back to the store-shed and served out a double
ration of corn to everybody, with two biscuits for each
dog. Then they sang ‘Beasts of England’ from end to end
seven times running, and after that they settled down for
the night and slept as they had never slept before.
But they woke at dawn as usual, and suddenly re-
membering the glorious thing that had happened, they
all raced out into the pasture together. A little way down
the pasture there was a knoll that commanded a view of
most of the farm. The animals rushed to the top of it and
gazed round them in the clear morning light. Yes, it was
theirs–everything that they could see was theirs! In the
ecstasy of that thought they gambolled round and round,
they hurled themselves into the air in great leaps of ex-
citement. They rolled in the dew, they cropped mouth-
fuls of the sweet summer grass, they kicked up clods of
the black earth and snuffed its rich scent. Then they made
a tour of inspection of the whole farm and surveyed with
speechless admiration the ploughland, the hayfield, the
orchard, the pool, the spinney. It was as though they had
never seen these things before, and even now they could
hardly believe that it was all their own.
Then they filed back to the farm buildings and halted in

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 CHAPTER II

silence outside the door of the farmhouse. That was theirs

too, but they were frightened to go inside. After a mo-
ment, however, Snowball and Napoleon butted the door
open with their shoulders and the animals entered in sin-
gle file, walking with the utmost care for fear of disturb-
ing anything. They tiptoed from room to room, afraid
to speak above a whisper and gazing with a kind of awe
at the unbelievable luxury, at the beds with their feather
mattresses, the looking-glasses, the horsehair sofa, the
Brussels carpet, the lithograph of Queen Victoria over
the drawing-room mantelpiece. They were just coming
down the stairs when Mollie was discovered to be miss-
ing. Going back, the others found that she had remained
behind in the best bedroom. She had taken a piece of blue
ribbon from Mrs. Jones’s dressing-table, and was hold-
ing it against her shoulder and admiring herself in the
glass in a very foolish manner. The others reproached her
sharply, and they went outside. Some hams hanging in
the kitchen were taken out for burial, and the barrel of
beer in the scullery was stove in with a kick from Boxer’s
hoof, otherwise nothing in the house was touched. A
unanimous resolution was passed on the spot that the
farmhouse should be preserved as a museum. All were
agreed that no animal must ever live there.

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The animals had their breakfast, and then Snowball

and Napoleon called them together again.
“Comrades,” said Snowball, “it is half-past six and we
have a long day before us. Today we begin the hay har-
vest. But there is another matter that must be attended to
first.”
The pigs now revealed that during the past three
months they had taught themselves to read and write
from an old spelling book which had belonged to Mr.
Jones’s children and which had been thrown on the rub-
bish heap. Napoleon sent for pots of black and white
paint and led the way down to the five-barred gate that
gave on to the main road. Then Snowball (for it was
Snowball who was best at writing) took a brush between
the two knuckles of his trotter, painted out MANOR
FARM from the top bar of the gate and in its place painted
ANIMAL FARM. This was to be the name of the farm
from now onwards. After this they went back to the farm
buildings, where Snowball and Napoleon sent for a lad-
der which they caused to be set against the end wall of
the big barn. They explained that by their studies of the
past three months the pigs had succeeded in reducing
the principles of Animalism to Seven Commandments.
These Seven Commandments would now be inscribed on

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 CHAPTER II

the wall; they would form an unalterable law by which all

the animals on Animal Farm must live for ever after. With
some difficulty (for it is not easy for a pig to balance him-
self on a ladder) Snowball climbed up and set to work,
with Squealer a few rungs below him holding the paint-
pot. The Commandments were written on the tarred wall
in great white letters that could be read thirty yards away.
They ran thus:

THE SEVEN COMMANDMENTS

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.

2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has
wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
7. All animals are equal.

It was very neatly written, and except that “friend”

was written “freind” and one of the “S’s” was the wrong
way round, the spelling was correct all the way through.
Snowball read it aloud for the benefit of the others. All

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 CHAPTER II

the animals nodded in complete agreement, and the clev-

erer ones at once began to learn the Commandments by
heart.
“Now, comrades,” cried Snowball, throwing down the
paint-brush, “to the hayfield! Let us make it a point of
honour to get in the harvest more quickly than Jones and
his men could do.”
But at this moment the three cows, who had seemed
uneasy for some time past, set up a loud lowing. They
had not been milked for twenty-four hours, and their ud-
ders were almost bursting. After a little thought, the pigs
sent for buckets and milked the cows fairly successfully,
their trotters being well adapted to this task. Soon there
were five buckets of frothing creamy milk at which many
of the animals looked with considerable interest.
“What is going to happen to all that milk?” said some-
one.
“Jones used sometimes to mix some of it in our mash,”
said one of the hens.
“Never mind the milk, comrades!” cried Napoleon,
placing himself in front of the buckets. “That will be
attended to. The harvest is more important. Comrade

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 CHAPTER II

Snowball will lead the way. I shall follow in a few min-

utes. Forward, comrades! The hay is waiting.”
So the animals trooped down to the hayfield to begin
the harvest, and when they came back in the evening it
was noticed that the milk had disappeared.

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