Animal Farm

From Manor Farm to Animal Farm

Set on a farm in Willingdon, a village in East Sussex, England, Animal Farm begins with an act of carelessness: “Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes.”

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Jones’s mistake leads to not only the hens but all the animals of the farm gathering in the big barn to hear about a strange dream recently had by old Major, a 12-year-old prized boar whose opinion is highly regarded among the animals. But first Major makes a speech in which he outlines the injustices that humans have inflicted on animals: “The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.” After calling for a rebellion to overthrow the tyranny of Man, he teaches the animals “Beasts of England,” a rousing song of his youth that had returned to him in his dream.

After Major dies, his ideas become a system of thought known as Animalism. Two young boars, Snowball and Napoleon, emerge as its primary proponents. Other animals take up different positions in relation to the boars’ teachings and plans for the Rebellion. Among the most loyal to the cause are the pig Squealer and the cart horses Boxer (the strongest of the animals) and Clover (one of the kindest). At least one animal, Jones’s mystical-minded pet raven Moses, is completely disinterested in the teaching and the plans of the other animals. Another not-so-interested animal is the white mare Mollie, who is more concerned that the Rebellion will mean she has to give up wearing ribbons. (It does.)

Three months later on Midsummer’s Eve, Jones goes on a drinking binge that results in the animals going unfed for two days. This proves to be the pivotal spark that ignites the Rebellion. The animals chase Jones and his farmhands off the farm and take possession of it, which they rename Animal Farm.

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The seven commandments of Animalism

As the farm’s leaders, Snowball and Napoleon devise seven commandments of Animalism, which are painted on the side of the big barn by the pigs (who have spent the last few months teaching themselves to read and write).

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.

All the animals work together to run the farm and bring in a successful harvest with no interference from humans. Every Sunday they hold a general assembly, during which they propose resolutions, engage in debates, and vote. At the end of the meetings everyone sings “Beasts of England.” Notably, only the pigs put forth resolutions. Moreover, Snowball and Napoleon constantly disagree on plans for the farm. Nevertheless, the animals form committees and attempt to learn to read and write, some with more success than others. (Whereas Boxer struggles with reading, Clover fares a little better; the strongest readers are the white goat Muriel and the cynical but wise old donkey Benjamin.)

In the meantime, some of the farm’s goods, such as the cows’ daily supply of milk and the harvest of apples, are doled out only to the pigs. Squealer is tasked with delivering the boars’ decisions to the rest of the animals, and he offers an explanation for what appears to be the pigs’ preferential treatment.

Many of us actually dislike milk and apples.…Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers.

Without these benefits for the pigs, Squealer tells the animals, Jones will come back.

The Battle of the Cowshed and Snowball’s expulsion

Sure enough, several months after the Rebellion, Jones returns with a gang of men and attempts to take back the farm. The animals successfully defend the farm, with Boxer and Snowball proving to be the bravest fighters. Snowball sustains a minor injury, and he and Boxer are awarded the military decorations “Animal Hero, First Class.” The victory is thereafter remembered as the Battle of the Cowshed.

As winter sets in, Snowball proposes the building of a windmill to generate electricity for the farm; his idea is that this will ease the animals’ labor and offer them some comforts such as a heated barn. Typically, Napoleon disagrees with Snowball, and he wants nothing to do with the committees. Instead, he spends much of his time giving private instruction to a litter of puppies. Meanwhile, Mollie is lured away from the farm by a man who gives her ribbons and sugar, and the sheep have developed a habit of interrupting meetings by repeatedly bleating, “Four legs good, two legs bad.”

The windmill debate takes a shocking turn when Napoleon’s puppies, now full grown, suddenly attack Snowball during a meeting and chase him off the farm. Napoleon becomes Animal Farm’s leader and institutes changes such as canceling the debates and even the singing of “Beasts of England.” Yet he decides to go ahead with building the windmill, telling the animals that it was his idea to begin with. Eventually, he convinces them that Snowball has been secretly returning to the farm at night to sabotage its progress. Indeed, anything that goes wrong is blamed on the absent Snowball. The animals are even told that Snowball actually fought on the side of the humans during the Battle of the Cowshed.

Napoleon becomes leader

Next, Napoleon moves into Jones’s house, and the animals discover that he is sleeping in the farmer’s old bed, even though this violates the fourth commandment. When the literate animals go to the barn to read the commandment, they find it actually says, “No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.” Napoleon also enlists the services of a human solicitor named Mr. Whymper to act as an intermediary between the farm and the outside world. Then the boar begins making business deals with the neighboring farmers, Mr. Pilkington and Mr. Frederick, often vacillating between agreeing to work with one or the other and seeming to play the humans against each other.

Things continue in this manner, with the animals discovering that one commandment after another has been amended. In particular, the pigs take to drinking Jones’s stash of alcohol, and the fifth commandment is changed to “No animal shall drink alcohol TO EXCESS.”

Meanwhile, the farm’s strongest worker, Boxer, grows older and weaker, having expended so much of his energy building the windmill (his personal motto is “I will work harder”). After Boxer collapses one day, the pigs promise to take him to a veterinarian, and the loyal horse looks forward to retirement in the farm’s big pasture. Instead, he is tricked into being sold to the glue factory to be killed. Afterward, the animals learn that the pigs have somehow acquired the money to buy themselves a cask of whiskey.

From pig to man

Years pass, and life on Animal Farm becomes harder. All the animals’ time is devoted to labor—except for the pigs. Yet the animals remain hopeful and proud of their farm.

One day, however, they receive a shock when they see the pigs walking around the farm on their hind legs. Moreover, the sheep, as if trained, begin bleating, “Four legs good, two legs BETTER!” The animals then discover the seventh commandment has also been changed:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

A week later a group of farmers visit Animal Farm for an inspection of the premises and a gathering in Jones’s house with the pigs. Curious and alarmed, the rest of the animals peer through a window and see the humans and the pigs sitting at a table together, drinking and playing cards. The farmers commend the pigs on how they discipline their “lower animals,” which are likened to the human “lower classes.” After a toast to the prosperity of Animal Farm, Napoleon announces that it will be henceforward known as “The Manor Farm.” As the pigs and humans laugh and then devolve into a fight over cards, the other animals continue to watch them.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

A colonial upbringing and the Spanish Civil War

Orwell began writing Animal Farm in 1943, during World War II (1939–45). His inspiration for the story, according to his preface to the 1947 Ukrainian edition of the book, was a random event he witnessed while living in the village of Wallington, Hertfordshire, England.

I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge cart-horse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.

But the story’s seeds were planted decades earlier: in Orwell’s colonial upbringing; in the Russian Revolution of 1917, in which the Bolsheviks overthrew Russia’s imperial government; and in Orwell’s service in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), a bloody battle between the conservative fascist-backed Nationalists and Spain’s leftist communist-supported Republican government.

Born in India in 1903, Orwell was the son of an English officer in the Indian Civil Service. He had a boarding school education in England, after which he went to Burma (now Myanmar) to serve in the Indian Imperial Police, despite his boyhood aspirations of becoming a writer. In Burma he became ashamed when he saw how much the Burmese people resented British rule. He returned to England in 1927 and soon after resigned from the imperial police. Pursuing a writing career, he traveled throughout Europe to immerse himself in the life of the poor and working class and report on social and political conditions.

In the meantime, his political views solidified. In 1947 he wrote,

Up to 1930 I did not on the whole look upon myself as a Socialist. In fact I had as yet no clearly defined political views. I became pro-Socialist more out of disgust with the way the poorer section of the industrial workers were oppressed and neglected than out of any theoretical admiration for a planned society.

Orwell’s political convictions took him to Spain to serve in the civil war. As he later explained in his 1946 essay “Why I Write,” while his earlier experiences had left him with a “natural hatred of authority,” the rise of German dictator Adolf Hitler and the war in Spain seemed to shift something in him such that “thereafter I knew where I stood.” He and his first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy Blair, joined the Republican militia—specifically the militia of the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista; POUM)—and he rose to the rank of second lieutenant before being shot in the throat by a fascist sniper. In May 1937 Orwell and his wife were forced to flee Spain, but not because of a threat posed by the Nationalists or fascists. Infighting had broken out between the leftists, particularly between pro-Stalinist communists (who had gained some control of the government) and the Marxist (or Trotskyist) faction to which Orwell belonged. According to Orwell, he and his wife were “very lucky to get out of Spain alive,” as many of their friends were shot, imprisoned, or disappeared.

Influence of the Russian Revolution

To understand what Orwell experienced in Spain, and how he applied these experiences to Animal Farm, it is helpful to know about the Russian Revolution, which occurred two decades earlier, beginning in February (March, New Style) 1917. Fed up by food shortages, the human losses of World War I (1914–18), and political corruption, Russian peasants, workers, and soldiers rose up to overthrow the imperial government, forcing Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate the throne. The tsar and his family were eventually exiled and killed. A provisional government was set up, but later in the year a second revolution occurred in which the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, took power. The new state, known as the Soviet Union, was founded on Leninism, a doctrine that mingled Karl Marx’s theories of communism and socialism with Lenin’s own commitment to end capitalism and install a “proletarian dictatorship” in its place.

In practice, however, this dictatorship was exercised not by the workers but by the leaders of the newly formed Communist Party. Moreover, Lenin’s death in 1924 ushered in a power struggle between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin, both of whom had played large roles in the second revolution of 1917. Stalin and his factions ousted Trotsky, who was driven into exile in 1929 and then assassinated in Mexico in 1940.

As Stalin took power, he reorganized Lenin’s economic policies and compelled workers and peasants to form collective farms that led to widespread famine. Dissenters were arrested and shot, exiled, or herded into concentration camps, where they were essentially worked to death. In the 1930s Stalin enacted the Moscow trials, a series of purges within the Communist Party. Further, despite sending military aid to Republican forces in Spain at the start of the civil war, he later conducted a violent purge of the Spanish left, including anarchists, Trotskyists, and syndicalists (a movement that called for direct action by the working class to abolish the capitalist order).

The Spanish Civil War saw other countries such as Germany and Italy lending military aid, although to the side of the Nationalists. In many ways the conflict was a dress rehearsal for World War II, which soon enough reared its head. Initially, Stalin attempted to ally with the Western powers of the second world war to fight Hitler, but then he made a pact with the Nazi leader (a move that disgusted Orwell) and subsequently annexed much of eastern Europe. However, Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 led Stalin to ally with the United States and Britain at last.