Overview

Animal Farm is a short novel by George Orwell. The animals of an English farm drive out their drunken owner and try to run the farm themselves, free and equal. The cleverest animals, the pigs, take charge. Step by step, one pig, Napoleon, gains total power, and the pigs end up living exactly like the humans they replaced. The book is told simply, like a fable, but it shows how a hopeful revolution can be betrayed from within.

Chapters 1–3

Old Major, a wise prize boar on Mr. Jones's Manor Farm, tells the animals that humans steal the fruits of their work. He dreams of a Rebellion that will set them free, warns them never to copy human ways, and teaches them the song Beasts of England. After he dies, the pigs build his ideas into a system called Animalism. When Jones forgets to feed the animals, they rise up and chase him off. They rename the farm Animal Farm and paint Seven Commandments on the barn wall, ending with the rule that all animals are equal. The first harvest is a joy. The pigs supervise rather than work, and two young boars lead: inventive Snowball and quiet, forceful Napoleon. Napoleon secretly takes nine puppies to raise himself. The pigs keep the milk and apples for themselves, and their persuasive spokesman, Squealer, defends it by asking if anyone wants Jones back. Nobody does, so the animals accept it. It is the first small sign that the pigs see themselves as different from the rest.

Chapters 4–6

Jones and his neighbours attack, but Snowball's clever defence wins the Battle of the Cowshed. Snowball and the mighty cart-horse Boxer are honoured as heroes. Vain Mollie runs off to a human who gives her sugar, and is never mentioned again. Snowball wins debates at the Sunday Meetings, but Napoleon quietly wins over the sheep, who bleat their slogan to drown Snowball out. Snowball plans a windmill to bring electricity and a shorter working week, and Napoleon opposes it. On the day of the vote, Napoleon's puppies, now huge dogs, chase Snowball off the farm. Napoleon ends the debates and rules through a committee of pigs. Then he adopts the windmill, and Squealer claims it was Napoleon's idea all along. Boxer takes a new motto: Napoleon is always right. The animals work harder than ever to build it. Napoleon starts trading with humans, and the pigs move into the farmhouse and sleep in beds. When the animals check the Commandments, the wording has changed. After a violent storm, the half-built windmill lies in ruins, and Napoleon blames the absent Snowball.

Chapters 7–10

In a hungry winter, Napoleon starves the hens into giving up their eggs. Snowball is blamed for everything and branded a traitor who always worked for Jones. Animals who once crossed Napoleon confess to plotting with Snowball and are killed by the dogs. Clover weeps on the knoll, knowing this is not what they hoped for, and Beasts of England is banned. More Commandments are quietly changed, Napoleon is worshipped with titles and poems, and Squealer's figures say life keeps improving while the animals go hungry. Napoleon sells timber to Mr. Frederick, who pays with fake money and blows up the rebuilt windmill. Loyal Boxer works himself into collapse and is driven away in a horse slaughterer's van, though Squealer insists he died peacefully in hospital. Years later, few remember the Rebellion. The farm is richer, but only the pigs and dogs share in it, and the finished windmill grinds corn for profit instead of bringing electricity. The pigs walk on two legs, carry whips and wear human clothes. The Commandments are replaced by a single rule saying some animals are more equal than others. Napoleon renames the farm the Manor Farm and drinks with the human farmers. Watching through the window, the other animals can no longer tell the pigs from the men.

This page is based on Christopher Hitchens' introduction printed at the front of this edition (Animal Farm and 1984, Harcourt), plus the novel's own text for the message and moral. It uses no other outside sources. Everything about history and Orwell's life below comes from that introduction, retold in plain words.

When and why it was written

According to Hitchens, George Orwell wrote Animal Farm during the Second World War. London was being bombed by the Nazis, and Britain was officially a friend and ally of Stalin's Russia, the Soviet Union. Orwell hated Hitler and fascism. He had even fought, and been wounded, as a volunteer for the Republic in the Spanish war. Yet he chose this awkward moment to write a sharp satire on what Hitchens calls the illusion of Soviet Communism: the belief that the Russian revolution had created a free and equal society.

Hitchens points out that the book is an allegory, a story where characters stand for real people. Napoleon is a figure for Stalin, the Soviet dictator, and Snowball is a figure for Trotsky, Stalin's rival, who was driven out. Hitchens notes one odd gap: there is no figure for Lenin, the revolution's first leader. Nobody knows why. Hitchens guesses that Orwell saw the way communism destroyed itself as partly a great tragedy, as well as a great crime. He also mentions the ruthless, witless forcing of Soviet farms into state control, which the book's story of hard work and hunger echoes, though many children have enjoyed the book without knowing any of this history.

A book almost never published

Hitchens says Animal Farm was very nearly strangled at birth. The manuscript had to be dug, scorched and crumpled, out of the ruins of Orwell's bombed North London home. It was sent to the poet T. S. Eliot, an editor at the publisher Faber and Faber. Eliot turned it down in a condescending letter, calling it too close to the views of Trotsky's followers.

A British government official named Peter Smollett warned publishers against the book, on the grounds that it would be tactless to mock Stalin while he was an ally. Hitchens says there is strong evidence that the publisher Jonathan Cape dropped the book because of him. Smollett was later exposed as a Soviet agent. Another publisher, Victor Gollancz, a left-wing sympathiser, also refused it. In the end a small firm, Secker and Warburg, printed a very small edition, paying Orwell an advance of forty-five pounds.

After the war, Ukrainian socialists living in refugee camps in Europe saw what the book meant. Orwell gave them the right to print it in Ukrainian for free, and wrote for them the only introduction to Animal Farm he ever composed. Most copies were seized by the American military and handed to the Red Army to be burned. In America, one publisher refused it because animal stories supposedly did not sell, and another declined it too. Harcourt, Brace finally published it in 1946. Orwell had only a few years left to live. He died in January 1950.

How the book was received

The original subtitle was A Fairy Story, said with tongue in cheek. Hitchens calls the book biting but basically good-natured. The farm setting feels cosy, and Mr. Jones is partly a figure of comedy. Boxer's fate, though, is truly sad, because of his simple, loyal bravery. The pigs are both funny and nasty.

The book became a modern classic, taught in schools, and its line about some animals being more equal than others entered everyday speech. Hitchens says it was banned in every country under Communist rule, is still sometimes suppressed in one-party states, and is sometimes forbidden in parts of the Islamic world because of its focus on pigs. He mentions a brave stage version in Beijing, where the novel itself could not officially be bought. He also notes that a later cartoon film, paid for by the American CIA as Cold War propaganda, cut the ending. In the novel, that ending shows the pigs restoring the farm's old name and becoming impossible to tell apart from the human farmers. Hitchens' point is that both sides tried to use or bend the book for their own purposes.

The story's message

Power corrupts. The pigs begin as teachers of freedom and end as the new masters, wearing Jones's clothes and carrying his whip. The last scene, where the animals cannot tell pigs from men, is the book's clearest lesson.

Watch the words. Squealer never needs to win an argument. He renames things, invents figures and asks if anyone wants Jones back. Hitchens praises Orwell for warning about sloganised thinking and official language, and the sheep's bleating shows exactly that.

Remember, and write it down. The pigs win because the animals cannot remember the rules or read the wall. A people who lose their memory of the past can be told anything.

Don't trade freedom for safety. Hitchens says the book is a strong medicine against servility and against the temptation to give up freedom in exchange for security, a bargain that ends with losing both. The animals accept every loss because they fear Jones's return, and they end up with neither freedom nor full stomachs.

Speak up while it still matters. Benjamin sees the truth but stays silent until Boxer is already in the van. Boxer trusts so completely that he stops thinking. The book shows that good, hard-working creatures can be ruled through their own loyalty.

The love of liberty survives. Hitchens ends by saying that while the drive to power and cruelty lives in people, so does the instinct for freedom. In the novel, even at the bleakest point, the animals still know the tune of Beasts of England and still hope.

Napoleon

Napoleon is a large, fierce-looking Berkshire boar who says little but usually gets his way (Ch 2). From the start he works quietly while others talk. The first sign of what he is comes on the day of the Rebellion, when he stands in front of the milk and tells the animals not to worry about it. By evening it is gone (Ch 2). He shows no interest in Snowball's committees, but takes nine puppies away to raise himself (Ch 3).

He cannot beat Snowball in debate, so he wins in other ways. He courts the sheep between Meetings (Ch 5), urinates on Snowball's plans, and finally sets his grown dogs on him (Ch 5). Once Snowball is gone, Napoleon takes over even the windmill he opposed (Ch 5). His power rests on fear, not argument. He rarely speaks at length, rarely appears in public, and lets the dogs and Squealer do the work (Ch 7, Ch 8).

As his power grows, he takes everything Major warned against: the farmhouse and its beds (Ch 6), trade and money (Ch 6), medals he gives himself (Ch 7, Ch 8), alcohol (Ch 8, Ch 9), and finally two legs, a whip, a pipe and Jones's clothes (Ch 10). He is also cruel. He starves the hens (Ch 7) and has animals killed after they confess (Ch 7). He is not as clever as he believes: Frederick cheats him with fake money (Ch 8). By the end he is a mirror of the humans, and it is impossible to tell him from Mr. Pilkington (Ch 10).

Snowball

Snowball is lively, quick-talking and full of ideas (Ch 2). He writes the Commandments, designs the flag, sets up committees and reading classes, and turns the Commandments into a slogan the slower animals can learn (Ch 2, Ch 3). He is brave too. He plans the defence of the farm, charges Jones and is wounded (Ch 4). His windmill shows real hope of an easier life for everyone (Ch 5).

He is not perfect. He agrees with the other pigs that they should have the milk and apples (Ch 3), and he tells Boxer that the only good human is a dead one (Ch 4). Still, the book shows him working in the open and winning by persuasion, while Napoleon works in secret and wins by force.

After he is chased away (Ch 5), Snowball becomes a different kind of character: a villain the pigs invent. He is blamed for the windmill's fall (Ch 6), for every broken window and lost key (Ch 7), and his part in the battle is rewritten again and again (Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9). He is useful to Napoleon precisely because he is not there to answer back.

Squealer

Squealer is a small, fat pig with a shrill voice and a gift for persuasion (Ch 2). He skips about and whisks his tail as he talks, and the others say he could turn black into white. He is Napoleon's voice. Every time the pigs take something new, Squealer explains it: the milk and apples are for brainwork (Ch 3), the end of the Meetings is a sacrifice by Napoleon (Ch 5), the bed rule was always about sheets (Ch 6).

His tricks are simple but powerful. He asks if the animals want Jones back, which ends every argument (Ch 3, Ch 5, Ch 6). He asks if a rule is written down (Ch 6). He reads out figures nobody can check (Ch 8, Ch 9). He uses gentle words for bad news, calling a cut in food a readjustment (Ch 9). When words are not enough, a few dogs stand beside him (Ch 5, Ch 6). He is caught at night beside a ladder and white paint at the Commandment wall (Ch 8), and he is the first pig to walk on two legs (Ch 10).

Boxer

Boxer is the farm's biggest and strongest animal, a cart-horse who is not clever but is deeply good (Ch 1). He is careful not to tread on small animals, and he is upset when he thinks he has killed a stable-lad in battle (Ch 4). His two mottos sum him up: he will work harder (Ch 3), and Napoleon is always right (Ch 5).

He is the farm's backbone. He holds back runaway boulders and works extra hours alone (Ch 6). He is also its most loyal believer. When Squealer rewrites Snowball's part in the battle, Boxer is the one animal who says plainly that he saw Snowball fight bravely (Ch 7). But he gives way as soon as he is told Napoleon has spoken. After the killings, he decides the fault must lie with the animals and the answer is to work harder (Ch 7).

His trust is his tragedy. He works himself into collapse, dreaming of retiring and learning the alphabet (Ch 9). He is driven away in a horse slaughterer's van, kicking too weakly to escape (Ch 9). The pigs then use his name and his mottos to make others work harder (Ch 9).

Clover

Clover is a stout, motherly mare who protects the weak, shown when she shelters the lost ducklings with her leg (Ch 1). She loses all her foals to Jones (Ch 1) and becomes one of the pigs' most faithful followers (Ch 2). She is wiser than Boxer and notices more. She catches Mollie with a human (Ch 5), and she is the one who keeps going back to the barn wall to check the rules (Ch 6, Ch 8, Ch 10).

Her finest moment is on the knoll after the killings (Ch 7). She looks at the farm and knows that this is not what they hoped for, but she lacks the words to say so. She chooses to stay loyal anyway. She lives to see everything, and at the end it is her old eyes that see the pigs' faces change (Ch 10).

Benjamin

Benjamin the donkey is the oldest and gloomiest animal on the farm (Ch 1). He can read as well as any pig but chooses not to (Ch 3). He believes nothing ever really changes and life always goes on badly (Ch 5, Ch 10). He sees more than anyone. He spots the blasting powder (Ch 8) and seems to understand the ladder at the barn wall (Ch 8). But he refuses to use what he knows.

Only his love for Boxer moves him. He keeps the flies off his fallen friend, gallops for the first time in his life, and reads out the words on the slaughterer's van (Ch 9). By then it is too late. His silence shows that knowing the truth is not enough if you never act on it.

Mollie

Mollie is a pretty, vain white mare who loves sugar and ribbons (Ch 1). She never understands the Rebellion and cares only whether she can keep her comforts (Ch 2). She shirks work (Ch 3), hides during the battle (Ch 4), and finally leaves to pull a cart for a human who pampers her (Ch 5). She is the first animal to choose comfort over freedom, openly. The pigs, later, make the same choice, but in secret.

Old Major

Old Major is the wise boar whose speech starts everything (Ch 1). He names the problem, that humans take what animals produce, and offers a dream of a better life. His warnings against copying humans become the yardstick for the whole book. He dies three nights later (Ch 2), so he never sees what is done in his name. His skull is first dug up for the animals to honour (Ch 5), then quietly buried again when the pigs make peace with the humans (Ch 10).

Moses

Moses the raven is Jones's pet, a spy who does no work (Ch 2). He tells the animals of Sugarcandy Mountain, where animals go after death. He flies off with Mrs. Jones (Ch 2) and returns years later, unchanged (Ch 9). The pigs call his story a lie but let him stay and give him beer (Ch 9). He seems to offer a comfort that keeps hungry animals patient (my guess, because the animals believe him precisely because their lives are so hard).

Muriel

Muriel the goat is a quiet reader who helps Clover check the Commandments (Ch 6, Ch 8). She reads the changed words aloud without questioning them, but she notices the change in the Fifth Commandment herself (Ch 8). She asks the one plain question when the song is banned: why (Ch 7). By the last chapter she is dead (Ch 10).

The dogs

Napoleon's nine dogs are the puppies he took from their mothers (Ch 3). They return as his private force (Ch 5), wagging their tails at him as the old dogs did at Jones. They end debates with growls and carry out the killings (Ch 7). They show that Napoleon's rule rests on force.

The sheep

The sheep cannot learn the Commandments, so they learn a slogan instead (Ch 3). They repeat it whenever anyone might argue (Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 9). At the end they learn a new version that praises two legs (Ch 10). They show how a crowd that repeats slogans can drown out thought.

Mr. Jones

Mr. Jones is a drunken, neglectful farmer (Ch 1, Ch 2). His failure to feed the animals sparks the Rebellion (Ch 2). After losing the Battle of the Cowshed (Ch 4) he fades away and dies in a home for drunkards (Ch 10). Yet the pigs keep using his name to frighten the animals (Ch 3, Ch 5, Ch 6). In the end the pigs become Jones, wearing his clothes and drinking in his house (Ch 10).

Mr. Pilkington and Mr. Frederick

The two neighbouring farmers hate each other but agree in fearing Animal Farm (Ch 4). Pilkington is lazy and easy-going. Frederick is tough and cunning. Napoleon plays them off against each other over the timber, but Frederick cheats him and blows up the windmill (Ch 8). At the end Pilkington praises the pigs for working their animals so hard on so little food, and toasts them as equals (Ch 10).

Mr. Whymper

Mr. Whymper is the sly little lawyer who handles the farm's trade for a fee (Ch 6). He is the animals' only window on the outside, and Napoleon fools him with bins of sand (Ch 7). He grows richer as the farm does, and buys himself a smart cart (Ch 10).

Minimus

Minimus is the pig poet. He writes the song that replaces Beasts of England (Ch 7) and a poem worshipping Napoleon (Ch 8). He shows how art can be put to work for whoever is in charge.

These themes come only from the novel itself, covering the whole book.

Power corrupts

The pigs begin as teachers of the Rebellion and end as its new masters. The change is slow. First they take the milk and apples (Ch 3). Then they take the decisions (Ch 5), the farmhouse and its beds (Ch 6), alcohol (Ch 8, Ch 9), and finally two legs, whips and clothes (Ch 10). Each step seems small, and each is explained away. Old Major warned that in fighting Man the animals must not become like him (Ch 1). The last scene, where the animals cannot tell pigs from men, shows that warning coming true (Ch 10).

The power of words and lies

Squealer is the book's most dangerous weapon after the dogs. He changes the meaning of things with words: the pigs are brainworkers (Ch 3), Napoleon's power is a sacrifice (Ch 5), a cut in food is a readjustment (Ch 9). He explains away the slaughterer's van with a story about a vet (Ch 9). Slogans work the same way. The sheep's bleating ends every debate (Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7), and at the end a single changed word turns the slogan upside down (Ch 10).

Rewriting the past

The animals cannot read well and cannot remember clearly, and the pigs use this. Rules the animals remember are said never to have existed, because they are not written down (Ch 6). Then the written rules themselves change, a word or two at a time (Ch 6, Ch 8), until only one is left (Ch 10). Snowball's brave part in the battle is rewritten again and again until he is said to have led the enemy (Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9). By the end, no one can say whether life was better before, because they have nothing but Squealer's figures to compare it with (Ch 10).

Fear and force

Behind the words there are always the dogs. They chase Snowball away (Ch 5), growl down protest (Ch 5, Ch 6), and carry out the killings after the confessions (Ch 7). Squealer is often seen with a few dogs beside him (Ch 5, Ch 6). Fear of Jones's return is used as a second kind of force, ending every argument (Ch 3, Ch 5, Ch 6). The animals end up afraid to speak their minds at all, which is exactly what Clover grieves on the knoll (Ch 7).

Equality betrayed

The Rebellion is built on one idea: all animals are equal (Ch 1, Ch 2). From the first day the pigs are a little more equal, keeping the milk (Ch 2). Later, other animals must step aside for pigs, and pigs wear ribbons and drink beer while others go hungry (Ch 9). The final rule on the wall keeps the word equal but turns its meaning inside out (Ch 10). The farm grows richer, but only the pigs and dogs share in it (Ch 10).

Loyalty and blind trust

Boxer is the best of the animals, honest, kind and hard-working, but he trusts too much. His motto that Napoleon is always right stops him thinking for himself (Ch 5, Ch 7). His loyalty is repaid with the knacker's van (Ch 9). Clover also chooses loyalty over doubt (Ch 7). The book shows how good animals' trust can be used against them.

Knowledge without action

Benjamin knows and sees more than almost anyone, but refuses to use it (Ch 3, Ch 8). He reads the truth aloud only when Boxer is already in the van (Ch 9). The pigs learn to read first and use it to rule (Ch 2, Ch 3). Most other animals never learn to read well, so they cannot check what they are told (Ch 3, Ch 6, Ch 10). Knowledge is power in this book, and silence helps the powerful.

Work and reward

Major says animals work hard and get nothing back (Ch 1). After the Rebellion the animals work for themselves and feel the difference (Ch 3). But the work grows longer and the food smaller (Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 9). The windmill that was meant to give them a three-day week ends up grinding corn for profit (Ch 10). Retirement is promised and never comes (Ch 3, Ch 9, Ch 10). At the end Pilkington praises the farm because its animals work more and eat less than any others (Ch 10).

Hope

Even at the end, the animals never give up hope. They are proud to belong to the only farm run by animals, they still believe Major's dream will come one day, and they still secretly know the tune of Beasts of England (Ch 10). The book leaves it open whether this hope is a strength or another way they are kept quiet. Moses's Sugarcandy Mountain offers a similar hope, of rest after death (Ch 2, Ch 9).

The windmill

Seen in Ch 5 to 10. Snowball's windmill stands for the hope of a better, easier life for every animal: light, heat and a three-day week (Ch 5). Napoleon first fights it, then takes it over as his own (Ch 5). Building it becomes a reason for longer hours and less food (Ch 6, Ch 7). It falls twice, once in a storm and once to Frederick's explosives (Ch 6, Ch 8), and each time the animals start again. When it is finally finished, it grinds corn for money instead of lighting the stalls (Ch 10). The dream becomes a source of profit for the pigs.

The Seven Commandments on the barn wall

Seen in Ch 2 to 10. The Commandments are the farm's promise to itself, painted large so everyone can see them (Ch 2). They are meant never to change. Yet they change quietly, one or two words at a time, to fit what the pigs have already done (Ch 6, Ch 8). Squealer's fall beside a ladder and white paint shows how (Ch 8). At the end, only one rule remains, saying some animals are more equal than others (Ch 10). The wall shows how written truth can be rewritten by those who hold the brush.

Beasts of England

Seen in Ch 1 to 10. The song carries Major's dream and unites the animals (Ch 1). It spreads to other farms and frightens humans (Ch 4). Clover sings it on the knoll to express what she cannot say (Ch 7), and that is why it is banned. It is replaced by Minimus's song praising the farm (Ch 7), which never feels as good. Every animal still knows the old tune at the end, though no one dares sing it (Ch 10). The song stands for the original spirit of the Rebellion.

The sheep's slogan

Seen in Ch 3 to 10. Snowball invents a short slogan praising four legs over two, so that slower animals can grasp the rules (Ch 3). In the sheep's mouths it becomes noise that stops thought and drowns out debate (Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 9). At the end the slogan changes to praise two legs (Ch 10). It shows how slogans can be emptied and refilled with any meaning.

The farmhouse

Seen in Ch 1 to 10. At first the farmhouse is a museum of human luxury that no animal may live in (Ch 2). When the pigs move in, it becomes a sign of their new rank (Ch 6). Napoleon eats there alone from the best china (Ch 8), and the pigs drink there (Ch 8, Ch 9). In the last scene, pigs and men sit together around its table, and the animals look in from outside (Ch 10).

The flag

Seen in Ch 3 to 10. Snowball's green flag, made from an old tablecloth, has a white hoof and horn for the future Republic of the Animals (Ch 3). It flies at every celebration. At the end Napoleon removes the hoof and horn, leaving a plain green flag (Ch 10). The promise it stood for has been quietly taken away.

The dogs

Seen in Ch 3 to 10. Napoleon's dogs are taken as puppies and raised in secret (Ch 3). They stand for force and fear. They wag their tails at Napoleon as the old dogs did at Jones (Ch 5), showing that one master has replaced another.

Major's skull

Seen in Ch 5 to 10. The skull is dug up and set by the flagpole, and the animals must walk past it with respect (Ch 5). Honouring the dead founder makes Napoleon's rule look faithful to Major. At the end the skull is buried again to please the humans (Ch 10). Major's ideas are buried with it.

Milk and apples

Seen in Ch 2 to 3. The milk that vanishes on the first day (Ch 2) and the apples taken for the pigs (Ch 3) are the first small sign of inequality. Everything that follows grows from this.

Whips, clothes and two legs

Seen in Ch 1 to 10. Whips and ribbons are burned on the day of the Rebellion as signs of slavery (Ch 2). Boxer even burns his hat. Major warned against clothes and against anything on two legs (Ch 1). At the end Napoleon walks upright with a whip, and the pigs wear Jones's clothes (Ch 10). These things show how fully the pigs have become the old master.

Sugarcandy Mountain

Seen in Ch 2 and Ch 9. Moses's happy land in the sky offers rest after death (Ch 2). It returns when life is hardest (Ch 9). The pigs call it a lie but allow it, which suggests it is useful to them (my guess, because they feed Moses beer for doing no work).

Boxer's van

Seen in Ch 9. The van with a horse slaughterer's name on its side is the moment the truth is written in plain letters for anyone who can read it. Benjamin reads it, but too late, and Squealer then explains the words away (Ch 9). It shows how even written proof can be talked out of existence.

The pigs' faces at the window

Seen in Ch 10. In the last image, the animals look from pig to man and back again and cannot tell which is which (Ch 10). It sums up the whole book: the revolution has come full circle, and the new masters are no different from the old.

Squealer's figures

Seen in Ch 8 to 10. Long lists of numbers show production rising by hundreds of percent (Ch 8). The animals cannot check them, and they always show things getting better (Ch 9, Ch 10). They stand for official truth that replaces what the animals can feel in their own empty stomachs.