VIGNESH: Animal Farm

George Orwell

1945

Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but

was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes. With the ring of light from

his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicked oﬀ his

boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the

scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs. Jones was already snoring.

As soon as the light in the bedroom went out there was a stirring and a

ﬂuttering all through the farm buildings. Word had gone round during the day

that old Major, the prize Middle White boar, had had a strange dream on the

previous night and wished to communicate it to the other animals. It had been

agreed that they should all meet in the big barn as soon as Mr. Jones was safely

out of the way. Old Major (so he was always called, though the name under

which he had been exhibited was Willingdon Beauty) was so highly regarded on

the farm that everyone was quite ready to lose an hour's sleep in order to hear

what he had to say.

At one end of the big barn, on a sort of raised platform, Major was already

ensconced on his bed of straw, under a lantern which hung from a beam. He was

twelve years old and had lately grown rather stout, but he was still a majestic-

looking pig, with a wise and benevolent appearance in spite of the fact that his

tushes had never been cut. Before long the other animals began to arrive and

make themselves comfortable after their diﬀerent fashions. First came the three

dogs, Bluebell, Jessie, and Pincher, and then the pigs, who settled down in the

straw immediately in front of the platform. The hens perched themselves on

the window-sills, the pigeons ﬂuttered up to the rafters, the sheep and cows lay

down behind the pigs and began to chew the cud. The two cart-horses, Boxer

and Clover, came in together, walking very slowly and setting down their vast

hairy hoofs with great care lest there should be some small animal concealed in

the straw. Clover was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life, who had

never quite got her ﬁgure back after her fourth foal. Boxer was an enormous

beast, nearly eighteen hands high, and as strong as any two ordinary horses put

together. A white stripe down his nose gave him a somewhat stupid appearance,

and in fact he was not of ﬁrst-rate intelligence, but he was universally respected

for his steadiness of character and tremendous powers of work. After the horses

came Muriel, the white goat, and Benjamin, the donkey. Benjamin was the

oldest animal on the farm, and the worst tempered. He seldom talked, and

when he did, it was usually to make some cynical remark — for instance, he

would say that God had given him a tail to keep the ﬂies oﬀ, but that he would

sooner have had no tail and no ﬂies. Alone among the animals on the farm he

never laughed. If asked why, he would say that he saw nothing to laugh at.

Nevertheless, without openly admitting it, he was devoted to Boxer; the two

of them usually spent their Sundays together in the small paddock beyond the

orchard, grazing side by side and never speaking.

The two horses had just lain down when a brood of ducklings, which had lost

their mother, ﬁled into the barn, cheeping feebly and wandering from side to

side to ﬁnd some place where they would not be trodden on. Clover made a sort

of wall round them with her great foreleg, and the ducklings nestled down inside

it and promptly fell asleep. At the last moment Mollie, the foolish, pretty white

mare who drew Mr. Jones's trap, came mincing daintily in, chewing at a lump

of sugar. She took a place near the front and began ﬂirting her white mane,

hoping to draw attention to the red ribbons it was plaited with. Last of all came

the cat, who looked round, as usual, for the warmest place, and ﬁnally squeezed

herself in between Boxer and Clover; there she purred contentedly throughout

Major's speech without listening to a word of what he was saying.

All the animals were now present except Moses, the tame raven, who slept

on a perch behind the back door. When Major saw that they had all made

themselves comfortable and were waiting attentively, he cleared his throat and

began:

'Comrades, you have heard already about the strange dream that I had last

night. But I will come to the dream later. I have something else to say ﬁrst. I

do not think, comrades, that I shall be with you for many months longer, and

before I die, I feel it my duty to pass on to you such wisdom as I have acquired.

I have had a long life, I have had much time for thought as I lay alone in my

stall, and I think I may say that I understand the nature of life on this earth as

well as any animal now living. It is about this that I wish to speak to you.

'Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our

lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much

food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of

it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength; and the very instant that

our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No

animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year

old. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery:

that is the plain truth.

'But is this simply part of the order of nature? Is it because this land of

ours is so poor that it cannot aﬀord a decent life to those who dwell upon it?

No, comrades, a thousand times no! The soil of England is fertile, its climate

is good, it is capable of aﬀording food in abundance to an enormously greater

number of animals than now inhabit it. This single farm of ours would support

a dozen horses, twenty cows, hundreds of sheep — and all of them living in a

comfort and a dignity that are now almost beyond our imagining. Why then

do we continue in this miserable condition? Because nearly the whole of the

produce of our labour is stolen from us by human beings. There, comrades, is

the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word — Man. Man

is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause

of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever.

'Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not

give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot

run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them

to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from

starving, and the rest he keeps for himself. Our labour tills the soil, our dung

fertilises it, and yet there is not one of us that owns more than his bare skin.

You cows that I see before me, how many thousands of gallons of milk have

you given during this last year? And what has happened to that milk which

should have been breeding up sturdy calves? Every drop of it has gone down

the throats of our enemies. And you hens, how many eggs have you laid in this

last year, and how many of those eggs ever hatched into chickens? The rest

have all gone to market to bring in money for Jones and his men. And you,

Clover, where are those four foals you bore, who should have been the support

and pleasure of your old age? Each was sold at a year old — you will never see

one of them again. In return for your four conﬁnements and all your labour in

the ﬁelds, what have you ever had except your bare rations and a stall?

'And even the miserable lives we lead are not allowed to reach their natural

span. For myself I do not grumble, for I am one of the lucky ones. I am twelve

years old and have had over four hundred children. Such is the natural life of

a pig. But no animal escapes the cruel knife in the end. 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. To that horror we all must come — cows, pigs, hens, sheep,

everyone. Even the horses and the dogs have no better fate. You, Boxer, the

very day that those great muscles of yours lose their power, Jones will sell you

to the knacker, who will cut your throat and boil you down for the foxhounds.

As for the dogs, when they grow old and toothless, Jones ties a brick round

their necks and drowns them in the nearest pond.

'Is it not crystal clear, then, comrades, that all the evils of this life of ours

spring from the tyranny of human beings? Only get rid of Man, and the produce

of our labour would be our own. A1most overnight we could become rich and

free. What then must we do? Why, work night and day, body and soul, for the

overthrow of the human race! That is my message to you, comrades: Rebellion!

I do not know when that Rebellion will come, it might be in a week or in a

hundred years, but I know, as surely as I see this straw beneath my feet, that

sooner or later justice will be done. Fix your eyes on that, comrades, throughout

the short remainder of your lives! And above all, pass on this message of mine to

those who come after you, so that future generations shall carry on the struggle

until it is victorious.

'And remember, comrades, your resolution must never falter. No argument

must lead you astray. Never listen when they tell you that Man and the animals

have a common interest, that the prosperity of the one is the prosperity of the

others. It is all lies. Man serves the interests of no creature except himself.

And among us animals let there be perfect unity, perfect comradeship in the

struggle. All men are enemies. All animals are comrades.'

At this moment there was a tremendous uproar. While Major was speaking

four large rats had crept out of their holes and were sitting on their hindquarters,

listening to him. The dogs had suddenly caught sight of them, and it was only

by a swift dash for their holes that the rats saved their lives. Major raised his

trotter for silence.

'Comrades,' he said, 'here is a point that must be settled. The wild creatures,

such as rats and rabbits — are they our friends or our enemies? Let us put it

to the vote. I propose this question to the meeting: Are rats comrades?'

The vote was taken at once, and it was agreed by an overwhelming majority

that rats were comrades. There were only four dissentients, the three dogs and

the cat, who was afterwards discovered to have voted on both sides. Major

continued:

'I have little more to say. I merely repeat, remember always your duty of

enmity towards Man and all his ways. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.

Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. And remember also

that in ﬁghting against Man, we must not come to resemble him. Even when

you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices. No animal must ever live in

a house, or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes, or drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco,

or touch money, or engage in trade. All the habits of Man are evil. And, above

all, no animal must ever tyrannise over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever

or simple, we are all brothers. No animal must ever kill any other animal. All

animals are equal.

'And now, comrades, I will tell you about my dream of last night. I cannot

describe that dream to you. It was a dream of the earth as it will be when Man

has vanished. But it reminded me of something that I had long forgotten. Many

years ago, when I was a little pig, my mother and the other sows used to sing

an old song of which they knew only the tune and the ﬁrst three words. I had

known that tune in my infancy, but it had long since passed out of my mind.

Last night, however, it came back to me in my dream. And what is more, the

words of the song also came back — words, I am certain, which were sung by

the animals of long ago and have been lost to memory for generations. I will

sing you that song now, comrades. I am old and my voice is hoarse, but when

I have taught you the tune, you can sing it better for yourselves. It is called

Beasts of England.'

Old Major cleared his throat and began to sing. As he had said, his voice

was hoarse, but he sang well enough, and it was a stirring tune, something

between Clementine and La Cucaracha. The words ran:

Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland,

Beasts of every land and clime,

Hearken to my joyful tidings

Of the golden future time.

Soon or late the day is coming,

Tyrant Man shall be o'erthrown,

And the fruitful ﬁelds of England

Shall be trod by beasts alone.

Rings shall vanish from our noses,

And the harness from our back,

Bit and spur shall rust forever,

Cruel whips no more shall crack.

Riches more than mind can picture,

Wheat and barley, oats and hay,

Clover, beans, and mangel-wurzels

Shall be ours upon that day.

Bright will shine the ﬁelds of England,

Purer shall its waters be,

Sweeter yet shall blow its breezes

On the day that sets us free.

For that day we all must labour,

Though we die before it break;

Cows and horses, geese and turkeys,

All must toil for freedom's sake.

Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland,

Beasts of every land and clime,

Hearken well and spread my tidings

Of the golden future time.

The singing of this song threw the animals into the wildest excitement.

Almost before Major had reached the end, they had begun singing it for them-

selves. Even the stupidest of them had already picked up the tune and a few of

the words, and as for the clever ones, such as the pigs and dogs, they had the

entire song by heart within a few minutes. And then, after a few preliminary

tries, the whole farm burst out into Beasts of England in tremendous unison.

The cows lowed it, the dogs whined it, the sheep bleated it, the horses whinnied

it, the ducks quacked it. They were so delighted with the song that they sang

it right through ﬁve times in succession, and might have continued singing it all

night if they had not been interrupted.

Unfortunately, the uproar awoke Mr. Jones, who sprang out of bed, making

sure that there was a fox in the yard. He seized the gun which always stood in a

corner of his bedroom, and let ﬂy a charge of number 6 shot into the darkness.

The pellets buried themselves in the wall of the barn and the meeting broke

up hurriedly. Everyone ﬂed to his own sleeping-place. The birds jumped on to

their perches, the animals settled down in the straw, and the whole farm was

asleep in a moment.

Three nights later old Major died peacefully in his sleep. 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 Rebellion

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-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 considered 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 skipping 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 expounded 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 elementary 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 understand 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 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 beyond 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 Sugarcandy 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 thinking anything out for themselves, but

having once accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything that

they were told, and passed it on to the other animals 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 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 newspapers, drinking,

and occasionally feeding Moses on crusts of bread soaked in beer. His men were

idle and dishonest, 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 animals. 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 animals 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 animals could bear. With one accord, though

nothing of the kind had been planned beforehand, they ﬂung themselves upon

their tormentors. Jones and his men suddenly 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 another 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 successfully carried

through: Jones was expelled, and the Manor Farm was theirs.

For the ﬁrst few minutes the animals could hardly believe 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

anywhere upon it; then they raced back to the farm buildings 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 everything 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 remembering 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 excitement.They rolled in the

dew, they cropped mouthfuls 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 silence outside

the door of the farmhouse. That was theirs too, but they were frightened to

go inside. After a moment, however, Snowball and Napoleon butted the door

open with their shoulders and the animals entered in single ﬁle, walking with

the utmost care for fear of disturbing 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 lust coming down the stairs

when Mollie was discovered to be missing. 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 holding 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.

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 harvest. 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 rubbish 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 ladder 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 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 himself 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 the animals

nodded in complete agreement, and the cleverer 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 udders 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 someone.

'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 Snowball will lead the way. I shall follow in a few minutes. 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.

III

How they toiled and sweated to get the hay in! But their eﬀorts were rewarded,

for the harvest was an even bigger success than they had hoped.

Sometimes the work was hard; the implements had been designed for human

beings and not for animals, and it was a great drawback that no animal was

able to use any tool that involved standing on his hind legs. But the pigs were

so clever that they could think of a way round every diﬃculty. As for the horses,

they knew every inch of the ﬁeld, and in fact understood the business of mowing

and raking far better than Jones and his men had ever done. The pigs did not

actually work, but directed and supervised the others. With their superior

knowledge it was natural that they should assume the leadership. Boxer and

Clover would harness themselves to the cutter or the horse-rake (no bits or reins

were needed in these days, of course) and tramp steadily round and round the

ﬁeld with a pig walking behind and calling out 'Gee up, comrade!' or 'Whoa

back, comrade!' as the case might be. And every animal down to the humblest

worked at turning the hay and gathering it. Even the ducks and hens toiled to

and fro all day in the sun, carrying tiny wisps of hay in their beaks. In the end

they ﬁnished the harvest in two days' less time than it had usually taken Jones

and his men. Moreover, it was the biggest harvest that the farm had ever seen.

There was no wastage whatever; the hens and ducks with their sharp eyes had

gathered up the very last stalk. And not an animal on the farm had stolen so

much as a mouthful.

All through that summer the work of the farm went like clockwork. The an-

imals were happy as they had never conceived it possible to be. Every mouthful

of food was an acute positive pleasure, now that it was truly their own food,

produced by themselves and for themselves, not doled out to them by a grudging

master. With the worthless parasitical human beings gone, there was more for

everyone to eat. There was more leisure too, inexperienced though the animals

were. They met with many diﬃculties — for instance, later in the year, when

they harvested the corn, they had to tread it out in the ancient style and blow

away the chaﬀ with their breath, since the farm possessed no threshing machine

— but the pigs with their cleverness and Boxer with his tremendous muscles

always pulled them through. Boxer was the admiration of everybody. He had

been a hard worker even in Jones's time, but now he seemed more like three

horses than one; there were days when the entire work of the farm seemed to rest

on his mighty shoulders. From morning to night he was pushing and pulling,

always at the spot where the work was hardest. He had made an arrangement

with one of the cockerels to call him in the mornings half an hour earlier than

anyone else, and would put in some volunteer labour at whatever seemed to be

most needed, before the regular day's work began. His answer to every problem,

every setback, was 'I will work harder!' — which he had adopted as his personal

motto.

But everyone worked according to his capacity The hens and ducks, for

instance, saved ﬁve bushels of corn at the harvest by gathering up the stray

grains. Nobody stole, nobody grumbled over his rations, the quarrelling and

biting and jealousy which had been normal features of life in the old days had

almost disappeared. Nobody shirked — or almost nobody. Mollie, it was true,

was not good at getting up in the mornings, and had a way of leaving work early

on the ground that there was a stone in her hoof. And the behaviour of the

cat was somewhat peculiar. It was soon noticed that when there was work to

be done the cat could never be found. She would vanish for hours on end, and

then reappear at meal-times, or in the evening after work was over, as though

nothing had happened. But she always made such excellent excuses, and purred

so aﬀectionately, that it was impossible not to believe in her good intentions.

Old Benjamin, the donkey, seemed quite unchanged since the Rebellion. He did

his work in the same slow obstinate way as he had done it in Jones's time, never

shirking and never volunteering for extra work either. About the Rebellion and

its results he would express no opinion. When asked whether he was not happier

now that Jones was gone, he would say only 'Donkeys live a long time. None

of you has ever seen a dead donkey,' and the others had to be content with this

cryptic answer.

On Sundays there was no work. Breakfast was an hour later than usual, and

after breakfast there was a ceremony which was observed every week without

fail. First came the hoisting of the ﬂag. Snowball had found in the harness-room

an old green tablecloth of Mrs. Jones's and had painted on it a hoof and a horn

in white. This was run up the ﬂagstaﬀ in the farmhouse garden every Sunday 8,

morning. The ﬂag was green, Snowball explained, to represent the green ﬁelds of

England, while the hoof and horn signiﬁed the future Republic of the Animals

which would arise when the human race had been ﬁnally overthrown. After

the hoisting of the ﬂag all the animals trooped into the big barn for a general

assembly which was known as the Meeting. Here the work of the coming week

was planned out and resolutions were put forward and debated. It was always

the pigs who put forward the resolutions. The other animals understood how

to vote, but could never think of any resolutions of their own. Snowball and

Napoleon were by far the most active in the debates. But it was noticed that

these two were never in agreement: whatever suggestion either of them made,

the other could be counted on to oppose it. Even when it was resolved — a thing

no one could object to in itself — to set aside the small paddock behind the

orchard as a home of rest for animals who were past work, there was a stormy

debate over the correct retiring age for each class of animal. The Meeting always

ended with the singing of Beasts of England, and the afternoon was given up to

recreation.

The pigs had set aside the harness-room as a headquarters for themselves.

Here, in the evenings, they studied blacksmithing, carpentering, and other nec-

essary arts from books which they had brought out of the farmhouse. Snowball

also busied himself with organising the other animals into what he called Ani-

mal Committees. He was indefatigable at this. He formed the Egg Production

Committee for the hens, the Clean Tails League for the cows, the Wild Com-

rades' Re-education Committee (the object of this was to tame the rats and

rabbits), the Whiter Wool Movement for the sheep, and various others, besides

instituting classes in reading and writing. On the whole, these projects were

a failure. The attempt to tame the wild creatures, for instance, broke down

almost immediately. They continued to behave very much as before, and when

treated with generosity, simply took advantage of it. The cat joined the Re-

education Committee and was very active in it for some days. She was seen

one day sitting on a roof and talking to some sparrows who were just out of her

reach. She was telling them that all animals were now comrades and that any

sparrow who chose could come and perch on her paw; but the sparrows kept

their distance.

The reading and writing classes, however, were a great success. By the

autumn almost every animal on the farm was literate in some degree.

As for the pigs, they could already read and write perfectly. The dogs

learned to read fairly well, but were not interested in reading anything except

the Seven Commandments. Muriel, the goat, could read somewhat better than

the dogs, and sometimes used to read to the others in the evenings from scraps

of newspaper which she found on the rubbish heap. Benjamin could read as

well as any pig, but never exercised his faculty. So far as he knew, he said, there

was nothing worth reading. Clover learnt the whole alphabet, but could not

put words together. Boxer could not get beyond the letter D. He would trace

out A, B, C, D, in the dust with his great hoof, and then would stand staring

at the letters with his ears back, sometimes shaking his forelock, trying with

all his might to remember what came next and never succeeding. On several

occasions, indeed, he did learn E, F, G, H, but by the time he knew them, it was

always discovered that he had forgotten A, B, C, and D. Finally he decided to

be content with the ﬁrst four letters, and used to write them out once or twice

every day to refresh his memory. Mollie refused to learn any but the six letters

which spelt her own name. She would form these very neatly out of pieces of

twig, and would then decorate them with a ﬂower or two and walk round them

admiring them.

None of the other animals on the farm could get further than the letter A.

It was also found that the stupider animals, such as the sheep, hens, and ducks,

were unable to learn the Seven Commandments by heart. After much thought

Snowball declared that the Seven Commandments could in eﬀect be reduced to

a single maxim, namely: 'Four legs good, two legs bad.' This, he said, contained

the essential principle of Animalism. Whoever had thoroughly grasped it would

be safe from human inﬂuences. The birds at ﬁrst objected, since it seemed to

them that they also had two legs, but Snowball proved to them that this was

not so.

'A bird's wing, comrades,' he said, 'is an organ of propulsion and not of

manipulation. It should therefore be regarded as a leg. The distinguishing

mark of man is the hand, the instrument with which he does all his mischief.'

The birds did not understand Snowball's long words, but they accepted his

explanation, and all the humbler animals set to work to learn the new maxim

by heart. FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BAD, was inscribed on the end

wall of the barn, above the Seven Commandments and in bigger letters When

they had once got it by heart, the sheep developed a great liking for this maxim,

and often as they lay in the ﬁeld they would all start bleating 'Four legs good,

two legs bad! Four legs good, two legs bad!' and keep it up for hours on end,

never growing tired of it.

Napoleon took no interest in Snowball's committees. He said that the edu-

cation of the young was more important than anything that could be done for

those who were already grown up. It happened that Jessie and Bluebell had

both whelped soon after the hay harvest, giving birth between them to nine

sturdy puppies. As soon as they were weaned, Napoleon took them away from

their mothers, saying that he would make himself responsible for their educa-

tion. He took them up into a loft which could only be reached by a ladder from

the harness-room, and there kept them in such seclusion that the rest of the

farm soon forgot their existence.

The mystery of where the milk went to was soon cleared up. It was mixed

every day into the pigs' mash. The early apples were now ripening, and the grass

of the orchard was littered with windfalls. The animals had assumed as a matter

of course that these would be shared out equally; one day, however, the order

went forth that all the windfalls were to be collected and brought to the harness-

room for the use of the pigs. At this some of the other animals murmured, but

it was no use. All the pigs were in full agreement on this point, even Snowball

and Napoleon. Squealer was sent to make the necessary explanations to the

others.

'Comrades!' he cried. 'You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing

this in a spirit of selﬁshness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk

and apples. I dislike them myself. 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. The whole management and organisation of this farm

depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your

sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples. Do you know what would

happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back! Yes, Jones would

come back! Surely, comrades,' cried Squealer almost pleadingly, skipping from

side to side and whisking his tail, 'surely there is no one among you who wants

to see Jones come back?'

Now if there was one thing that the animals were completely certain of, it

was that they did not want Jones back. When it was put to them in this light,

they had no more to say. The importance of keeping the pigs in good health

was all too obvious. So it was agreed without further argument that the milk

and the windfall apples (and also the main crop of apples when they ripened)

should be reserved for the pigs alone.

By the late summer the news of what had happened on Animal Farm had spread

across half the county. Every day Snowball and Napoleon sent out ﬂights of

pigeons whose instructions were to mingle with the animals on neighbouring

farms, tell them the story of the Rebellion, and teach them the tune of Beasts

of England.

Most of this time Mr. Jones had spent sitting in the taproom of the Red

Lion at Willingdon, complaining to anyone who would listen of the monstrous

injustice he had suﬀered in being turned out of his property by a pack of good-

for-nothing animals. The other farmers sympathised in principle, but they did

not at ﬁrst give him much help. At heart, each of them was secretly wondering

whether he could not somehow turn Jones's misfortune to his own advantage.

It was lucky that the owners of the two farms which adjoined Animal Farm

were on permanently bad terms. One of them, which was named Foxwood, was

a large, neglected, old-fashioned farm, much overgrown by woodland, with all

its pastures worn out and its hedges in a disgraceful condition. Its owner, Mr.

Pilkington, was an easy-going gentleman farmer who spent most of his time in

ﬁshing or hunting according to the season. The other farm, which was called

Pinchﬁeld, was smaller and better kept. Its owner was a Mr. Frederick, a tough,

shrewd man, perpetually involved in lawsuits and with a name for driving hard

bargains. These two disliked each other so much that it was diﬃcult for them

to come to any agreement, even in defence of their own interests.

Nevertheless, they were both thoroughly frightened by the rebellion on An-

imal Farm, and very anxious to prevent their own animals from learning too

much about it. At ﬁrst they pretended to laugh to scorn the idea of animals

managing a farm for themselves. The whole thing would be over in a fortnight,

they said. They put it about that the animals on the Manor Farm (they insisted

on calling it the Manor Farm; they would not tolerate the name 'Animal Farm')

were perpetually ﬁghting among themselves and were also rapidly starving to

death. When time passed and the animals had evidently not starved to death,

Frederick and Pilkington changed their tune and began to talk of the terrible

wickedness that now ﬂourished on Animal Farm. It was given out that the ani-

mals there practised cannibalism, tortured one another with red-hot horseshoes,

and had their females in common. This was what came of rebelling against the

laws of Nature, Frederick and Pilkington said.

However, these stories were never fully believed. Rumours of a wonderful

farm, where the human beings had been turned out and the animals man-

aged their own aﬀairs, continued to circulate in vague and distorted forms,

and throughout that year a wave of rebelliousness ran through the countryside.

Bulls which had always been tractable suddenly turned savage, sheep broke

down hedges and devoured the clover, cows kicked the pail over, hunters refused

their fences and shot their riders on to the other side.Above all, the tune and

even the words of Beasts of England were known everywhere. It had spread

with astonishing speed. The human beings could not contain their rage when

they heard this song, though they pretended to think it merely ridiculous. They

could not understand, they said, how even animals could bring themselves to

sing such contemptible rubbish. Any animal caught singing it was given a ﬂog-

ging on the spot. And yet the song was irrepressible. The blackbirds whistled

it in the hedges, the pigeons cooed it in the elms, it got into the din of the

smithies and the tune of the church bells. And when the human beings listened

to it, they secretly trembled, hearing in it a prophecy of their future doom.

Early in October, when the corn was cut and stacked and some of it was

already threshed, a ﬂight of pigeons came whirling through the air and alighted

in the yard of Animal Farm in the wildest excitement. Jones and all his men,

with half a dozen others from Foxwood and Pinchﬁeld, had entered the ﬁve-

barred gate and were coming up the cart-track that led to the farm. They were

all carrying sticks, except Jones, who was marching ahead with a gun in his

hands. Obviously they were going to attempt the recapture of the farm.

This had long been expected, and all preparations had been made. Snowball,

who had studied an old book of Julius Caesar's campaigns which he had found

in the farmhouse, was in charge of the defensive operations. He gave his orders

quickly, and in a couple of minutes every animal was at his post.

As the human beings approached the farm buildings, Snowball launched his

ﬁrst attack. All the pigeons, to the number of thirty-ﬁve, ﬂew to and fro over

the men's heads and muted upon them from mid-air; and while the men were

dealing with this, the geese, who had been hiding behind the hedge, rushed out

and pecked viciously at the calves of their legs. However, this was only a light

skirmishing manoeuvre, intended to create a little disorder, and the men easily

drove the geese oﬀ with their sticks. Snowball now launched his second line

of attack. Muriel, Benjamin, and all the sheep, with Snowball at the head of

them, rushed forward and prodded and butted the men from every side, while

Benjamin turned around and lashed at them with his small hoofs. But once

again the men, with their sticks and their hobnailed boots, were too strong for

them; and suddenly, at a squeal from Snowball, which was the signal for retreat,

all the animals turned and ﬂed through the gateway into the yard.

The men gave a shout of triumph. They saw, as they imagined, their enemies

in ﬂight, and they rushed after them in disorder. This was just what Snowball

had intended. As soon as they were well inside the yard, the three horses,

the three cows, and the rest of the pigs, who had been lying in ambush in

the cowshed, suddenly emerged in their rear, cutting them oﬀ. Snowball now

gave the signal for the charge. He himself dashed straight for Jones. Jones

saw him coming, raised his gun and ﬁred. The pellets scored bloody streaks

along Snowball's back, and a sheep dropped dead. Without halting for an

instant, Snowball ﬂung his ﬁfteen stone against Jones's legs. Jones was hurled

into a pile of dung and his gun ﬂew out of his hands. But the most terrifying

spectacle of all was Boxer, rearing up on his hind legs and striking out with his

great iron-shod hoofs like a stallion. His very ﬁrst blow took a stable-lad from

Foxwood on the skull and stretched him lifeless in the mud. At the sight, several

men dropped their sticks and tried to run. Panic overtook them, and the next

moment all the animals together were chasing them round and round the yard.

They were gored, kicked, bitten, trampled on. There was not an animal on the

farm that did not take vengeance on them after his own fashion. Even the cat

suddenly leapt oﬀ a roof onto a cowman's shoulders and sank her claws in his

neck, at which he yelled horribly. At a moment when the opening was clear,

the men were glad enough to rush out of the yard and make a bolt for the main

road. And so within ﬁve minutes of their invasion they were in ignominious

retreat by the same way as they had come, with a ﬂock of geese hissing after

them and pecking at their calves all the way.

All the men were gone except one. Back in the yard Boxer was pawing with

his hoof at the stable-lad who lay face down in the mud, trying to turn him

over. The boy did not stir.

'He is dead,' said Boxer sorrowfully. 'I had no intention of doing that. I

forgot that I was wearing iron shoes. Who will believe that I did not do this on

purpose?'

'No sentimentality, comrade!' cried Snowball from whose wounds the blood

was still dripping. 'War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.'

'I have no wish to take life, not even human life,' repeated Boxer, and his

eyes were full of tears.

'Where is Mollie?' exclaimed somebody.

Mollie in fact was missing. For a moment there was great alarm; it was

feared that the men might have harmed her in some way, or even carried her

oﬀ with them. In the end, however, she was found hiding in her stall with her

head buried among the hay in the manger. She had taken to ﬂight as soon as

the gun went oﬀ. And when the others came back from looking for her, it was

to ﬁnd that the stable-lad, who in fact was only stunned, had already recovered

and made oﬀ.

The animals had now reassembled in the wildest excitement, each recounting

his own exploits in the battle at the top of his voice. An impromptu celebration

of the victory was held immediately. The ﬂag was run up and Beasts of England

was sung a number of times, then the sheep who had been killed was given a

solemn funeral, a hawthorn bush being planted on her grave. At the graveside

Snowball made a little speech, emphasising the need for all animals to be ready

to die for Animal Farm if need be.

The animals decided unanimously to create a military decoration, 'Animal

Hero, First Class,' which was conferred there and then on Snowball and Boxer.

It consisted of a brass medal (they were really some old horse-brasses which had

been found in the harness-room), to be worn on Sundays and holidays. There

was also 'Animal Hero, Second Class,' which was conferred posthumously on

the dead sheep.

There was much discussion as to what the battle should be called. In the

end, it was named the Battle of the Cowshed, since that was where the ambush

had been sprung. Mr. Jones's gun had been found lying in the mud, and it was

known that there was a supply of cartridges in the farmhouse. It was decided

to set the gun up at the foot of the Flagstaﬀ, like a piece of artillery, and to ﬁre

it twice a year — once on October the twelfth, the anniversary of the Battle of

the Cowshed, and once on Midsummer Day, the anniversary of the Rebellion.

As winter drew on, Mollie became more and more troublesome. She was late

for work every morning and excused herself by saying that she had overslept,

and she complained of mysterious pains, although her appetite was excellent.

On every kind of pretext she would run away from work and go to the drinking

pool, where she would stand foolishly gazing at her own reﬂection in the water.

But there were also rumours of something more serious. One day, as Mollie

strolled blithely into the yard, ﬂirting her long tail and chewing at a stalk of

hay, Clover took her aside.

'Mollie,' she said, 'I have something very serious to say to you. This morning

I saw you looking over the hedge that divides Animal Farm from Foxwood. One

of Mr. Pilkington's men was standing on the other side of the hedge. And —

I was a long way away, but I am almost certain I saw this — he was talking

to you and you were allowing him to stroke your nose. What does that mean,

Mollie?'

'He didn't! I wasn't! It isn't true!' cried Mollie, beginning to prance about

and paw the ground.

'Mollie! Look me in the face. Do you give me your word of honour that that

man was not stroking your nose?'

'It isn't true!' repeated Mollie, but she could not look Clover in the face,

and the next moment she took to her heels and galloped away into the ﬁeld.

A thought struck Clover. Without saying anything to the others, she went

to Mollie's stall and turned over the straw with her hoof. Hidden under the

straw was a little pile of lump sugar and several bunches of ribbon of diﬀerent

colours.

Three days later Mollie disappeared. For some weeks nothing was known of

her whereabouts, then the pigeons reported that they had seen her on the other

side of Willingdon. She was between the shafts of a smart dogcart painted red

and black, which was standing outside a public-house. A fat red-faced man in

check breeches and gaiters, who looked like a publican, was stroking her nose

and feeding her with sugar. Her coat was newly clipped and she wore a scarlet

ribbon round her forelock. She appeared to be enjoying herself, so the pigeons

said. None of the animals ever mentioned Mollie again.

In January there came bitterly hard weather. The earth was like iron, and

nothing could be done in the ﬁelds. Many meetings were held in the big barn,

and the pigs occupied themselves with planning out the work of the coming

season. It had come to be accepted that the pigs, who were manifestly cleverer

than the other animals, should decide all questions of farm policy, though their

decisions had to be ratiﬁed by a majority vote. This arrangement would have

worked well enough if it had not been for the disputes between Snowball and

Napoleon. These two disagreed at every point where disagreement was possible.

If one of them suggested sowing a bigger acreage with barley, the other was

certain to demand a bigger acreage of oats, and if one of them said that such

and such a ﬁeld was just right for cabbages, the other would declare that it was

useless for anything except roots. Each had his own following, and there were

some violent debates. At the Meetings Snowball often won over the majority

by his brilliant speeches, but Napoleon was better at canvassing support for

himself in between times. He was especially successful with the sheep. Of late

the sheep had taken to bleating 'Four legs good, two legs bad' both in and out

of season, and they often interrupted the Meeting with this. It was noticed that

they were especially liable to break into 'Four legs good, two legs bad' at crucial

moments in Snowball's speeches. Snowball had made a close study of some back

numbers of the Farmer and Stockbreeder which he had found in the farmhouse,

and was full of plans for innovations and improvements. He talked learnedly

about ﬁeld drains, silage, and basic slag, and had worked out a complicated

scheme for all the animals to drop their dung directly in the ﬁelds, at a diﬀerent

spot every day, to save the labour of cartage. Napoleon produced no schemes of

his own, but said quietly that Snowball's would come to nothing, and seemed

to be biding his time. But of all their controversies, none was so bitter as the

one that took place over the windmill.

In the long pasture, not far from the farm buildings, there was a small knoll

which was the highest point on the farm. After surveying the ground, Snowball

declared that this was just the place for a windmill, which could be made to

operate a dynamo and supply the farm with electrical power. This would light

the stalls and warm them in winter, and would also run a circular saw, a chaﬀ-

cutter, a mangel-slicer, and an electric milking machine. The animals had never

heard of anything of this kind before (for the farm was an old-fashioned one

and had only the most primitive machinery), and they listened in astonishment

while Snowball conjured up pictures of fantastic machines which would do their

work for them while they grazed at their ease in the ﬁelds or improved their

minds with reading and conversation.

Within a few weeks Snowball's plans for the windmill were fully worked out.

The mechanical details came mostly from three books which had belonged to

Mr. Jones — One Thousand Useful Things to Do About the House, Every Man

His Own Bricklayer, and Electricity for Beginners. Snowball used as his study

a shed which had once been used for incubators and had a smooth wooden

ﬂoor, suitable for drawing on. He was closeted there for hours at a time. With

his books held open by a stone, and with a piece of chalk gripped between the

knuckles of his trotter, he would move rapidly to and fro, drawing in line after

line and uttering little whimpers of excitement. Gradually the plans grew into

a complicated mass of cranks and cog-wheels, covering more than half the ﬂoor,

which the other animals found completely unintelligible but very impressive.

All of them came to look at Snowball's drawings at least once a day. Even the

hens and ducks came, and were at pains not to tread on the chalk marks. Only

Napoleon held aloof. He had declared himself against the windmill from the

start. One day, however, he arrived unexpectedly to examine the plans. He

walked heavily round the shed, looked closely at every detail of the plans and

snuﬀed at them once or twice, then stood for a little while contemplating them

out of the corner of his eye; then suddenly he lifted his leg, urinated over the

plans, and walked out without uttering a word.

The whole farm was deeply divided on the subject of the windmill. Snowball

did not deny that to build it would be a diﬃcult business. Stone would have

to be carried and built up into walls, then the sails would have to be made

and after that there would be need for dynamos and cables. (How these were

to be procured, Snowball did not say.) But he maintained that it could all be

done in a year. And thereafter, he declared, so much labour would be saved

that the animals would only need to work three days a week. Napoleon, on

the other hand, argued that the great need of the moment was to increase food

production, and that if they wasted time on the windmill they would all starve

to death. The animals formed themselves into two factions under the slogan,

'Vote for Snowball and the three-day week' and 'Vote for Napoleon and the full

manger.' Benjamin was the only animal who did not side with either faction.

He refused to believe either that food would become more plentiful or that the

windmill would save work. Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on

as it had always gone on — that is, badly.

Apart from the disputes over the windmill, there was the question of the

defence of the farm. It was fully realised that though the human beings had

been defeated in the Battle of the Cowshed they might make another and more

determined attempt to recapture the farm and reinstate Mr. Jones. They had

all the more reason for doing so because the news of their defeat had spread

across the countryside and made the animals on the neighbouring farms more

restive than ever. As usual, Snowball and Napoleon were in disagreement.

According to Napoleon, what the animals must do was to procure ﬁrearms and

train themselves in the use of them. According to Snowball, they must send

out more and more pigeons and stir up rebellion among the animals on the

other farms. The one argued that if they could not defend themselves they were

bound to be conquered, the other argued that if rebellions happened everywhere

they would have no need to defend themselves. The animals listened ﬁrst to

Napoleon, then to Snowball, and could not make up their minds which was

right; indeed, they always found themselves in agreement with the one who was

speaking at the moment.

At last the day came when Snowball's plans were completed. At the Meeting

on the following Sunday the question of whether or not to begin work on the

windmill was to be put to the vote. When the animals had assembled in the

big barn, Snowball stood up and, though occasionally interrupted by bleating

from the sheep, set forth his reasons for advocating the building of the windmill.

Then Napoleon stood up to reply. He said very quietly that the windmill was

nonsense and that he advised nobody to vote for it, and promptly sat down

again; he had spoken for barely thirty seconds, and seemed almost indiﬀerent

as to the eﬀect he produced. At this Snowball sprang to his feet, and shouting

down the sheep, who had begun bleating again, broke into a passionate appeal

in favour of the windmill. Until now the animals had been about equally divided

in their sympathies, but in a moment Snowball's eloquence had carried them

away. In glowing sentences he painted a picture of Animal Farm as it might

be when sordid labour was lifted from the animals' backs. His imagination had

now run far beyond chaﬀ-cutters and turnip-slicers. Electricity, he said, could

operate threshing machines, ploughs, harrows, rollers, and reapers and binders,

besides supplying every stall with its own electric light, hot and cold water, and

an electric heater. By the time he had ﬁnished speaking, there was no doubt

as to which way the vote would go. But just at this moment Napoleon stood

up and, casting a peculiar sidelong look at Snowball, uttered a high-pitched

whimper of a kind no one had ever heard him utter before.

At this there was a terrible baying sound outside, and nine enormous dogs

wearing brass-studded collars came bounding into the barn. They dashed

straight for Snowball, who only sprang from his place just in time to escape

their snapping jaws. In a moment he was out of the door and they were after

him. Too amazed and frightened to speak, all the animals crowded through the

door to watch the chase. Snowball was racing across the long pasture that led

to the road. He was running as only a pig can run, but the dogs were close on

his heels. Suddenly he slipped and it seemed certain that they had him. Then

he was up again, running faster than ever, then the dogs were gaining on him

again. One of them all but closed his jaws on Snowball's tail, but Snowball

whisked it free just in time. Then he put on an extra spurt and, with a few

inches to spare, slipped through a hole in the hedge and was seen no more.

Silent and terriﬁed, the animals crept back into the barn. In a moment the

dogs came bounding back. At ﬁrst no one had been able to imagine where these

creatures came from, but the problem was soon solved: they were the pup-

pies whom Napoleon had taken away from their mothers and reared privately.

Though not yet full-grown, they were huge dogs, and as ﬁerce-looking as wolves.

They kept close to Napoleon. It was noticed that they wagged their tails to him

in the same way as the other dogs had been used to do to Mr. Jones.

Napoleon, with the dogs following him, now mounted on to the raised por-

tion of the ﬂoor where Major had previously stood to deliver his speech. He

announced that from now on the Sunday-morning Meetings would come to an

end. They were unnecessary, he said, and wasted time. In future all questions

relating to the working of the farm would be settled by a special committee

of pigs, presided over by himself. These would meet in private and afterwards

communicate their decisions to the others. The animals would still assemble on

Sunday mornings to salute the ﬂag, sing Beasts of England, and receive their

orders for the week; but there would be no more debates.

In spite of the shock that Snowball's expulsion had given them, the animals

were dismayed by this announcement. Several of them would have protested if

they could have found the right arguments. Even Boxer was vaguely troubled.

He set his ears back, shook his forelock several times, and tried hard to marshal

his thoughts; but in the end he could not think of anything to say. Some of

the pigs themselves, however, were more articulate. Four young porkers in the

front row uttered shrill squeals of disapproval, and all four of them sprang to

their feet and began speaking at once. But suddenly the dogs sitting round

Napoleon let out deep, menacing growls, and the pigs fell silent and sat down

again. Then the sheep broke out into a tremendous bleating of 'Four legs good,

two legs bad!' which went on for nearly a quarter of an hour and put an end to

any chance of discussion.

Afterwards Squealer was sent round the farm to explain the new arrangement

to the others.

'Comrades,' he said, 'I trust that every animal here appreciates the sacriﬁce

that Comrade Napoleon has made in taking this extra labour upon himself.

Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure! On the contrary, it

is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more ﬁrmly than Comrade

Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you

make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong

decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? Suppose you had decided

to follow Snowball, with his moonshine of windmills — Snowball, who, as we

now know, was no better than a criminal?'

'He fought bravely at the Battle of the Cowshed,' said somebody.

'Bravery is not enough,' said Squealer. 'Loyalty and obedience are more

important. And as to the Battle of the Cowshed, I believe the time will come

when we shall ﬁnd that Snowball's part in it was much exaggerated. Discipline,

comrades, iron discipline! That is the watchword for today. One false step, and

our enemies would be upon us. Surely, comrades, you do not want Jones back?'

Once again this argument was unanswerable. Certainly the animals did not

want Jones back; if the holding of debates on Sunday mornings was liable to

bring him back, then the debates must stop. Boxer, who had now had time to

think things over, voiced the general feeling by saying: 'If Comrade Napoleon

says it, it must be right.' And from then on he adopted the maxim, 'Napoleon

is always right,' in addition to his private motto of 'I will work harder.'

By this time the weather had broken and the spring ploughing had begun.

The shed where Snowball had drawn his plans of the windmill had been shut

up and it was assumed that the plans had been rubbed oﬀ the ﬂoor. Every

Sunday morning at ten o'clock the animals assembled in the big barn to receive

their orders for the week. The skull of old Major, now clean of ﬂesh, had been

disinterred from the orchard and set up on a stump at the foot of the ﬂagstaﬀ,

beside the gun. After the hoisting of the ﬂag, the animals were required to ﬁle

past the skull in a reverent manner before entering the barn. Nowadays they did

not sit all together as they had done in the past. Napoleon, with Squealer and

another pig named Minimus, who had a remarkable gift for composing songs

and poems, sat on the front of the raised platform, with the nine young dogs

forming a semicircle round them, and the other pigs sitting behind. The rest of

the animals sat facing them in the main body of the barn. Napoleon read out

the orders for the week in a gruﬀ soldierly style, and after a single singing of

Beasts of England, all the animals dispersed.

On the third Sunday after Snowball's expulsion, the animals were somewhat

surprised to hear Napoleon announce that the windmill was to be built after

all. He did not give any reason for having changed his mind, but merely warned

the animals that this extra task would mean very hard work, it might even be

necessary to reduce their rations. The plans, however, had all been prepared,

down to the last detail. A special committee of pigs had been at work upon

them for the past three weeks. The building of the windmill, with various other

improvements, was expected to take two years.

That evening Squealer explained privately to the other animals that Napoleon

had never in reality been opposed to the windmill. On the contrary, it was

he who had advocated it in the beginning, and the plan which Snowball had

drawn on the ﬂoor of the incubator shed had actually been stolen from among

Napoleon's papers. The windmill was, in fact, Napoleon's own creation. Why,

then, asked somebody, had he spoken so strongly against it? Here Squealer

looked very sly. That, he said, was Comrade Napoleon's cunning. He had

seemed to oppose the windmill, simply as a manoeuvre to get rid of Snow-

ball, who was a dangerous character and a bad inﬂuence. Now that Snowball

was out of the way, the plan could go forward without his interference. This,

said Squealer, was something called tactics. He repeated a number of times,

'Tactics, comrades, tactics!' skipping round and whisking his tail with a merry

laugh. The animals were not certain what the word meant, but Squealer spoke

so persuasively, and the three dogs who happened to be with him growled so

threateningly, that they accepted his explanation without further questions.

All that year the animals worked like slaves. But they were happy in their work;

they grudged no eﬀort or sacriﬁce, well aware that everything that they did was

for the beneﬁt of themselves and those of their kind who would come after them,

and not for a pack of idle, thieving human beings.

Throughout the spring and summer they worked a sixty-hour week, and in

August Napoleon announced that there would be work on Sunday afternoons

as well. This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself

from it would have his rations reduced by half. Even so, it was found necessary

to leave certain tasks undone. The harvest was a little less successful than in

the previous year, and two ﬁelds which should have been sown with roots in

the early summer were not sown because the ploughing had not been completed

early enough. It was possible to foresee that the coming winter would be a hard

one.

The windmill presented unexpected diﬃculties. There was a good quarry of

limestone on the farm, and plenty of sand and cement had been found in one

of the outhouses, so that all the materials for building were at hand. But the

problem the animals could not at ﬁrst solve was how to break up the stone into

pieces of suitable size. There seemed no way of doing this except with picks and

crowbars, which no animal could use, because no animal could stand on his hind

legs. Only after weeks of vain eﬀort did the right idea occur to somebody —

namely, to utilise the force of gravity. Huge boulders, far too big to be used as

they were, were lying all over the bed of the quarry. The animals lashed ropes

round these, and then all together, cows, horses, sheep, any animal that could

lay hold of the rope — even the pigs sometimes joined in at critical moments —

they dragged them with desperate slowness up the slope to the top of the quarry,

where they were toppled over the edge, to shatter to pieces below. Transporting

the stone when it was once broken was comparatively simple. The horses carried

it oﬀ in cart-loads, the sheep dragged single blocks, even Muriel and Benjamin

yoked themselves into an old governess-cart and did their share. By late summer

a suﬃcient store of stone had accumulated, and then the building began, under

the superintendence of the pigs.

But it was a slow, laborious process. Frequently it took a whole day of

exhausting eﬀort to drag a single boulder to the top of the quarry, and sometimes

when it was pushed over the edge it failed to break. Nothing could have been

achieved without Boxer, whose strength seemed equal to that of all the rest of

the animals put together. When the boulder began to slip and the animals cried

out in despair at ﬁnding themselves dragged down the hill, it was always Boxer

who strained himself against the rope and brought the boulder to a stop. To

see him toiling up the slope inch by inch, his breath coming fast, the tips of

his hoofs clawing at the ground, and his great sides matted with sweat, ﬁlled

everyone with admiration. Clover warned him sometimes to be careful not to

overstrain himself, but Boxer would never listen to her. His two slogans, 'I will

work harder' and 'Napoleon is always right,' seemed to him a suﬃcient answer

to all problems. He had made arrangements with the cockerel to call him three-

quarters of an hour earlier in the mornings instead of half an hour. And in his

spare moments, of which there were not many nowadays, he would go alone to

the quarry, collect a load of broken stone, and drag it down to the site of the

windmill unassisted.

The animals were not badly oﬀ throughout that summer, in spite of the

hardness of their work. If they had no more food than they had had in Jones's

day, at least they did not have less. The advantage of only having to feed

themselves, and not having to support ﬁve extravagant human beings as well,

was so great that it would have taken a lot of failures to outweigh it. And in

many ways the animal method of doing things was more eﬃcient and saved

labour. Such jobs as weeding, for instance, could be done with a thoroughness

impossible to human beings. And again, since no animal now stole, it was

unnecessary to fence oﬀ pasture from arable land, which saved a lot of labour

on the upkeep of hedges and gates. Nevertheless, as the summer wore on, various

unforeseen shortages began to make them selves felt. There was need of paraﬃn

oil, nails, string, dog biscuits, and iron for the horses' shoes, none of which could

be produced on the farm. Later there would also be need for seeds and artiﬁcial

manures, besides various tools and, ﬁnally, the machinery for the windmill. How

these were to be procured, no one was able to imagine.

One Sunday morning, when the animals assembled to receive their orders,

Napoleon announced that he had decided upon a new policy. From now on-

wards Animal Farm would engage in trade with the neighbouring farms: not, of

course, for any commercial purpose, but simply in order to obtain certain ma-

terials which were urgently necessary. The needs of the windmill must override

everything else, he said. He was therefore making arrangements to sell a stack of

hay and part of the current year's wheat crop, and later on, if more money were

needed, it would have to be made up by the sale of eggs, for which there was

always a market in Willingdon. The hens, said Napoleon, should welcome this

sacriﬁce as their own special contribution towards the building of the windmill.

Once again the animals were conscious of a vague uneasiness. Never to have

any dealings with human beings, never to engage in trade, never to make use of

money — had not these been among the earliest resolutions passed at that ﬁrst

triumphant Meeting after Jones was expelled? All the animals remembered

passing such resolutions: or at least they thought that they remembered it.

The four young pigs who had protested when Napoleon abolished the Meetings

raised their voices timidly, but they were promptly silenced by a tremendous

growling from the dogs. Then, as usual, the sheep broke into 'Four legs good,

two legs bad!' and the momentary awkwardness was smoothed over. Finally

Napoleon raised his trotter for silence and announced that he had already made

all the arrangements. There would be no need for any of the animals to come

in contact with human beings, which would clearly be most undesirable. He

intended to take the whole burden upon his own shoulders. A Mr. Whymper, a

solicitor living in Willingdon, had agreed to act as intermediary between Animal

Farm and the outside world, and would visit the farm every Monday morning to

receive his instructions. Napoleon ended his speech with his usual cry of 'Long

live Animal Farm!' and after the singing of Beasts of England the animals were

dismissed.

Afterwards Squealer made a round of the farm and set the animals' minds

at rest. He assured them that the resolution against engaging in trade and

using money had never been passed, or even suggested. It was pure imagina-

tion, probably traceable in the beginning to lies circulated by Snowball. A few

animals still felt faintly doubtful, but Squealer asked them shrewdly, 'Are you

certain that this is not something that you have dreamed, comrades? Have you

any record of such a resolution? Is it written down anywhere?' And since it

was certainly true that nothing of the kind existed in writing, the animals were

satisﬁed that they had been mistaken.

Every Monday Mr. Whymper visited the farm as had been arranged. He

was a sly-looking little man with side whiskers, a solicitor in a very small way of

business, but sharp enough to have realised earlier than anyone else that Animal

Farm would need a broker and that the commissions would be worth having.

The animals watched his coming and going with a kind of dread, and avoided

him as much as possible. Nevertheless, the sight of Napoleon, on all fours,

delivering orders to Whymper, who stood on two legs, roused their pride and

partly reconciled them to the new arrangement. Their relations with the human

race were now not quite the same as they had been before. The human beings

did not hate Animal Farm any less now that it was prospering; indeed, they

hated it more than ever. Every human being held it as an article of faith that

the farm would go bankrupt sooner or later, and, above all, that the windmill

would be a failure. They would meet in the public-houses and prove to one

another by means of diagramsthat the windmill was bound to fall down, or that

if it did stand up, then that it would never work. And yet, against their will,

they had developed a certain respect for the eﬃciency with which the animals

were managing their own aﬀairs. One symptom of this was that they had begun

to call Animal Farm by its proper name and ceased to pretend that it was called

the Manor Farm. They had also dropped their championship of Jones, who had

given up hope of getting his farm back and gone to live in another part of the

county. Except through Whymper, there was as yet no contact between Animal

Farm and the outside world, but there were constant rumours that Napoleon

was about to enter into a deﬁnite business agreement either with Mr. Pilkington

of Foxwood or with Mr. Frederick of Pinchﬁeld — but never, it was noticed,

with both simultaneously.

It was about this time that the pigs suddenly moved into the farmhouse and

took up their residence there. Again the animals seemed to remember that a

resolution against this had been passed in the early days, and again Squealer was

able to convince them that this was not the case. It was absolutely necessary,

he said, that the pigs, who were the brains of the farm, should have a quiet

place to work in. It was also more suited to the dignity of the Leader (for of

late he had taken to speaking of Napoleon under the title of 'Leader') to live in

a house than in a mere sty. Nevertheless, some of the animals were disturbed

when they heard that the pigs not only took their meals in the kitchen and

used the drawing-room as a recreation room, but also slept in the beds. Boxer

passed it oﬀ as usual with 'Napoleon is always right!', but Clover, who thought

she remembered a deﬁnite ruling against beds, went to the end of the barn

and tried to puzzle out the Seven Commandments which were inscribed there.

Finding herself unable to read more than individual letters, she fetched Muriel.

'Muriel,' she said, 'read me the Fourth Commandment. Does it not say

something about never sleeping in a bed?'

With some diﬃculty Muriel spelt it out.

'It says, 'No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets," she announced ﬁnally.

Curiously enough, Clover had not remembered that the Fourth Command-

ment mentioned sheets; but as it was there on the wall, it must have done so.

And Squealer, who happened to be passing at this moment, attended by two or

three dogs, was able to put the whole matter in its proper perspective.

'You have heard then, comrades,' he said, 'that we pigs now sleep in the

beds of the farmhouse? And why not? You did not suppose, surely, that there

was ever a ruling against beds? A bed merely means a place to sleep in. A pile

of straw in a stall is a bed, properly regarded. The rule was against sheets,

which are a human invention. We have removed the sheets from the farmhouse

beds, and sleep between blankets. And very comfortable beds they are too!

But not more comfortable than we need, I can tell you, comrades, with all the

brainwork we have to do nowadays. You would not rob us of our repose, would

you, comrades? You would not have us too tired to carry out our duties? Surely

none of you wishes to see Jones back?'

The animals reassured him on this point immediately, and no more was said

about the pigs sleeping in the farmhouse beds. And when, some days afterwards,

it was announced that from now on the pigs would get up an hour later in the

mornings than the other animals, no complaint was made about that either.

By the autumn the animals were tired but happy. They had had a hard

year, and after the sale of part of the hay and corn, the stores of food for the

winter were none too plentiful, but the windmill compensated for everything.

It was almost half built now. After the harvest there was a stretch of clear dry

weather, and the animals toiled harder than ever, thinking it well worth while

to plod to and fro all day with blocks of stone if by doing so they could raise the

walls another foot. Boxer would even come out at nights and work for an hour

or two on his own by the light of the harvest moon. In their spare moments

the animals would walk round and round the half-ﬁnished mill, admiring the

strength and perpendicularity of its walls and marvelling that they should ever

have been able to build anything so imposing. Only old Benjamin refused to

grow enthusiastic about the windmill, though, as usual, he would utter nothing

beyond the cryptic remark that donkeys live a long time.

November came, with raging south-west winds. Building had to stop because

it was now too wet to mix the cement. Finally there came a night when the gale

was so violent that the farm buildings rocked on their foundations and several

tiles were blown oﬀ the roof of the barn. The hens woke up squawking with

terror because they had all dreamed simultaneously of hearing a gun go oﬀ in

the distance. In the morning the animals came out of their stalls to ﬁnd that

the ﬂagstaﬀ had been blown down and an elm tree at the foot of the orchard

had been plucked up like a radish. They had just noticed this when a cry of

despair broke from every animal's throat. A terrible sight had met their eyes.

The windmill was in ruins.

With one accord they dashed down to the spot. Napoleon, who seldom

moved out of a walk, raced ahead of them all. Yes, there it lay, the fruit

of all their struggles, levelled to its foundations, the stones they had broken

and carried so laboriously scattered all around. Unable at ﬁrst to speak, they

stood gazing mournfully at the litter of fallen stone Napoleon paced to and fro

in silence, occasionally snuﬃng at the ground. His tail had grown rigid and

twitched sharply from side to side, a sign in him of intense mental activity.

Suddenly he halted as though his mind were made up.

'Comrades,' he said quietly, 'do you know who is responsible for this? Do

you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill?

SNOWBALL!' he suddenly roared in a voice of thunder. 'Snowball has done this

thing! In sheer malignity, thinking to set back our plans and avenge himself for

his ignominious expulsion, this traitor has crept here under cover of night and

destroyed our work of nearly a year. Comrades, here and now I pronounce the

death sentence upon Snowball. 'Animal Hero, Second Class,' and half a bushel

of apples to any animal who brings him to justice. A full bushel to anyone who

captures him alive!'

The animals were shocked beyond measure to learn that even Snowball could

be guilty of such an action. There was a cry of indignation, and everyone

began thinking out ways of catching Snowball if he should ever come back.

Almost immediately the footprints of a pig were discovered in the grass at a

little distance from the knoll. They could only be traced for a few yards, but

appeared to lead to a hole in the hedge. Napoleon snuﬀed deeply at them and

pronounced them to be Snowball's. He gave it as his opinion that Snowball had

probably come from the direction of Foxwood Farm.

'No more delays, comrades!' cried Napoleon when the footprints had been

examined. 'There is work to be done. This very morning we begin rebuilding

the windmill, and we will build all through the winter, rain or shine. We will

teach this miserable traitor that he cannot undo our work so easily. Remember,

comrades, there must be no alteration in our plans: they shall be carried out to

the day. Forward, comrades! Long live the windmill! Long live Animal Farm!'

VII

It was a bitter winter. The stormy weather was followed by sleet and snow, and

then by a hard frost which did not break till well into February. The animals

carried on as best they could with the rebuilding of the windmill, well knowing

that the outside world was watching them and that the envious human beings

would rejoice and triumph if the mill were not ﬁnished on time.

Out of spite, the human beings pretended not to believe that it was Snowball

who had destroyer the windmill: they said that it had fallen down because the

walls were too thin. The animals knew that this was not the case. Still, it had

been decided to build the walls three feet thick this time instead of eighteen

inches as before, which meant collecting much larger quantities of stone. For

a long i.ne the quarry was full of snowdrifts and nothing could be done. Some

progress was made in the dry frosty we ather that followed, but it was cruel

work, and the animals could not feel so hopeful about it as they had felt before.

They were always cold, and usually hungry as well. Only Boxer and Clover

never lost heart. Squealer made excellent speeches on the joy of service and

the dignity of labour, but the other animals found more inspiration in Boxer's

strength and his never-failing cry of 'I will work harder! '

In January food fell short. The corn ration was drastically reduced, and it

was announced that an extra potato ration would be issued to make up for it.

Then it was discovered that the greater part of the potato crop had been frosted

in the clamps, which had not been covered thickly enough. The potatoes had

become soft and discoloured, and only a few were edible. For days at a time the

animals had nothing to eat but chaﬀ and mangels. Starvation seemed to stare

them in the face.

It was vitally necessary to conceal this fact from the outside world. Embold-

ened by the collapse of the windmill, the human beings were inventing fresh lies

about Animal Farm. Once again it was being put about that all the animals

were dying of famine and disease, and that they were continually ﬁghting among

themselves and had resorted to cannibalism and infanticide. Napoleon was well

aware of the bad results that might follow if the real facts of the food situation

were known, and he decided to make use of Mr. Whymper to spread a contrary

impression. Hitherto the animals had had little or no contact with Whymper

on his weekly visits: now, however, a few selected animals, mostly sheep, were

instructed to remark casually in his hearing that rations had been increased. In

addition, Napoleon ordered the almost empty bins in the store-shed to be ﬁlled

nearly to the brim with sand, which was then covered up with what remained

of the grain and meal. On some suitable pretext Whymper was led through the

store-shed and allowed to catch a glimpse of the bins. He was deceived, and

continued to report to the outside world that there was no food shortage on

Animal Farm.

Nevertheless, towards the end of January it became obvious that it would be

necessary to procure some more grain from somewhere. In these days Napoleon

rarely appeared in public, but spent all his time in the farmhouse, which was

guarded at each door by ﬁerce-looking dogs. When he did emerge, it was in a

ceremonial manner, with an escort of six dogs who closely surrounded him and

growled if anyone came too near. Frequently he did not even appear on Sunday

mornings, but issued his orders through one of the other pigs, usually Squealer.

One Sunday morning Squealer announced that the hens, who had just come

in to lay again, must surrender their eggs. Napoleon had accepted, through

Whymper, a contract for four hundred eggs a week. The price of these would

pay for enough grain and meal to keep the farm going till summer came on and

conditions were easier.

When the hens heard this, they raised a terrible outcry. They had been

warned earlier that this sacriﬁce might be necessary, but had not believed that

it would really happen. They were just getting their clutches ready for the

spring sitting, and they protested that to take the eggs away now was murder.

For the ﬁrst time since the expulsion of Jones, there was something resembling

a rebellion. Led by three young Black Minorca pullets, the hens made a deter-

mined eﬀort to thwart Napoleon's wishes. Their method was to ﬂy up to the

rafters and there lay their eggs, which smashed to pieces on the ﬂoor. Napoleon

acted swiftly and ruthlessly. He ordered the hens' rations to be stopped, and

decreed that any animal giving so much as a grain of corn to a hen should be

punished by death. The dogs saw to it that these orders were carried out. For

ﬁve days the hens held out, then they capitulated and went back to their nesting

boxes. Nine hens had died in the meantime. Their bodies were buried in the

orchard, and it was given out that they had died of coccidiosis. Whymper heard

nothing of this aﬀair, and the eggs were duly delivered, a grocer's van driving

up to the farm once a week to take them away.

All this while no more had been seen of Snowball. He was rumoured to be

hiding on one of the neighbouring farms, either Foxwood or Pinchﬁeld. Napoleon

was by this time on slightly better terms with the other farmers than before. It

happened that there was in the yard a pile of timber which had been stacked

there ten years earlier when a beech spinney was cleared. It was well seasoned,

and Whymper had advised Napoleon to sell it; both Mr. Pilkington and Mr.

Frederick were anxious to buy it. Napoleon was hesitating between the two,

unable to make up his mind. It was noticed that whenever he seemed on the

point of coming to an agreement with Frederick, Snowball was declared to be

in hiding at Foxwood, while, when he inclined toward Pilkington, Snowball was

said to be at Pinchﬁeld.

Suddenly, early in the spring, an alarming thing was discovered. Snowball

was secretly frequenting the farm by night! The animals were so disturbed that

they could hardly sleep in their stalls. Every night, it was said, he came creeping

in under cover of darkness and performed all kinds of mischief. He stole the corn,

he upset the milk-pails, he broke the eggs, he trampled the seedbeds, he gnawed

the bark oﬀ the fruit trees. Whenever anything went wrong it became usual

to attribute it to Snowball. If a window was broken or a drain was blocked

up, someone was certain to say that Snowball had come in the night and done

it, and when the key of the store-shed was lost, the whole farm was convinced

that Snowball had thrown it down the well. Curiously enough, they went on

believing this even after the mislaid key was found under a sack of meal. The

cows declared unanimously that Snowball crept into their stalls and milked them

in their sleep. The rats, which had been troublesome that winter, were also said

to be in league with Snowball.

Napoleon decreed that there should be a full investigation into Snowball's

activities. With his dogs in attendance he set out and made a careful tour of

inspection of the farm buildings, the other animals following at a respectful

distance. At every few steps Napoleon stopped and snuﬀed the ground for

traces of Snowball's footsteps, which, he said, he could detect by the smell. He

snuﬀed in every corner, in the barn, in the cow-shed, in the henhouses, in the

vegetable garden, and found traces of Snowball almost everywhere. He would

put his snout to the ground, give several deep sniﬀs, ad exclaim in a terrible

voice, 'Snowball! He has been here! I can smell him distinctly!' and at the

word 'Snowball' all the dogs let out blood-curdling growls and showed their side

teeth.

The animals were thoroughly frightened. It seemed to them as though Snow-

ball were some kind of invisible inﬂuence, pervading the air about them and

menacing them with all kinds of dangers. In the evening Squealer called them

together, and with an alarmed expression on his face told them that he had

some serious news to report.

'Comrades!' cried Squealer, making little nervous skips, 'a most terrible

thing has been discovered. Snowball has sold himself to Frederick of Pinchﬁeld

Farm, who is even now plotting to attack us and take our farm away from us!

Snowball is to act as his guide when the attack begins. But there is worse

than that. We had thought that Snowball's rebellion was caused simply by his

vanity and ambition. But we were wrong, comrades. Do you know what the

real reason was? Snowball was in league with Jones from the very start! He was

Jones's secret agent all the time. It has all been proved by documents which

he left behind him and which we have only just discovered. To my mind this

explains a great deal, comrades. Did we not see for ourselves how he attempted

— fortunately without success — to get us defeated and destroyed at the Battle

of the Cowshed?'

The animals were stupeﬁed. This was a wickedness far outdoing Snowball's

destruction of the windmill. But it was some minutes before they could fully

take it in. They all remembered, or thought they remembered, how they had

seen Snowball charging ahead of them at the Battle of the Cowshed, how he had

rallied and encouraged them at every turn, and how he had not paused for an

instant even when the pellets from Jones's gun had wounded his back. At ﬁrst

it was a little diﬃcult to see how this ﬁtted in with his being on Jones's side.

Even Boxer, who seldom asked questions, was puzzled. He lay down, tucked

his fore hoofs beneath him, shut his eyes, and with a hard eﬀort managed to

formulate his thoughts.

'I do not believe that,' he said. 'Snowball fought bravely at the Battle of the

Cowshed. I saw him myself. Did we not give him 'Animal Hero, ﬁrst Class,'

immediately afterwards?'

'That was our mistake, comrade. For we know now — it is all written down

in the secret documents that we have found — that in reality he was trying to

lure us to our doom.'

'But he was wounded,' said Boxer. 'We all saw him running with blood.'

'That was part of the arrangement!' cried Squealer. 'Jones's shot only

grazed him. I could show you this in his own writing, if you were able to read

it. The plot was for Snowball, at the critical moment, to give the signal for

ﬂight and leave the ﬁeld to the enemy. And he very nearly succeeded — I will

even say, comrades, he would have succeeded if it had not been for our heroic

Leader, Comrade Napoleon. Do you not remember how, just at the moment

when Jones and his men had got inside the yard, Snowball suddenly turned and

ﬂed, and many animals followed him? And do you not remember, too, that it

was just at that moment, when panic was spreading and all seemed lost, that

Comrade Napoleon sprang forward with a cry of 'Death to Humanity!' and

sank his teeth in Jones's leg? Surely you remember that, comrades?' exclaimed

Squealer, frisking from side to side.

Now when Squealer described the scene so graphically, it seemed to the

animals that they did remember it. At any rate, they remembered that at the

critical moment of the battle Snowball had turned to ﬂee. But Boxer was still

a little uneasy.

'I do not believe that Snowball was a traitor at the beginning,' he said

ﬁnally. 'What he has done since is diﬀerent. But I believe that at the Battle of

the Cowshed he was a good comrade.'

'Our Leader, Comrade Napoleon,' announced Squealer, speaking very slowly

and ﬁrmly, 'has stated categorically — categorically, comrade — that Snowball

was Jones's agent from the very beginning — yes, and from long before the

Rebellion was ever thought of.'

'Ah, that is diﬀerent!' said Boxer. 'If Comrade Napoleon says it, it must be

right.'

'That is the true spirit, comrade!' cried Squealer, but it was noticed he cast

a very ugly look at Boxer with his little twinkling eyes. He turned to go, then

paused and added impressively: 'I warn every animal on this farm to keep his

eyes very wide open. For we have reason to think that some of Snowball's secret

agents are lurking among us at this moment! '

Four days later, in the late afternoon, Napoleon ordered all the animals to

assemble in the yard. When they were all gathered together, Napoleon emerged

from the farmhouse, wearing both his medals (for he had recently awarded

himself 'Animal Hero, First Class,' and 'Animal Hero, Second Class'), with his

nine huge dogs frisking round him and uttering growls that sent shivers down

all the animals' spines. They all cowered silently in their places, seeming to

know in advance that some terrible thing was about to happen.

Napoleon stood sternly surveying his audience; then he uttered a high-

pitched whimper. Immediately the dogs bounded forward, seized four of the

pigs by the ear and dragged them, squealing with pain and terror, to Napoleon's

feet. The pigs' ears were bleeding, the dogs had tasted blood, and for a few mo-

ments they appeared to go quite mad. To the amazement of everybody, three

of them ﬂung themselves upon Boxer. Boxer saw them coming and put out his

great hoof, caught a dog in mid-air, and pinned him to the ground. The dog

shrieked for mercy and the other two ﬂed with their tails between their legs.

Boxer looked at Napoleon to know whether he should crush the dog to death

or let it go. Napoleon appeared to change countenance, and sharply ordered

Boxer to let the dog go, whereat Boxer lifted his hoof, and the dog slunk away,

bruised and howling.

Presently the tumult died down. The four pigs waited, trembling, with guilt

written on every line of their countenances. Napoleon now called upon them

to confess their crimes. They were the same four pigs as had protested when

Napoleon abolished the Sunday Meetings. Without any further prompting they

confessed that they had been secretly in touch with Snowball ever since his

expulsion, that they had collaborated with him in destroying the windmill, and

that they had entered into an agreement with him to hand over Animal Farm

to Mr. Frederick. They added that Snowball had privately admitted to them

that he had been Jones's secret agent for years past. When they had ﬁnished

their confession, the dogs promptly tore their throats out, and in a terrible voice

Napoleon demanded whether any other animal had anything to confess.

The three hens who had been the ringleaders in the attempted rebellion

over the eggs now came forward and stated that Snowball had appeared to

them in a dream and incited them to disobey Napoleon's orders. They, too,

were slaughtered. Then a goose came forward and confessed to having secreted

six ears of corn during the last year's harvest and eaten them in the night. Then

a sheep confessed to having urinated in the drinking pool — urged to do this,

so she said, by Snowball — and two other sheep confessed to having murdered

an old ram, an especially devoted follower of Napoleon, by chasing him round

and round a bonﬁre when he was suﬀering from a cough. They were all slain

on the spot. And so the tale of confessions and executions went on, until there

was a pile of corpses lying before Napoleon's feet and the air was heavy with

the smell of blood, which had been unknown there since the expulsion of Jones.

When it was all over, the remaining animals, except for the pigs and dogs,

crept away in a body. They were shaken and miserable. They did not know

which was more shocking — the treachery of the animals who had leagued

themselves with Snowball, or the cruel retribution they had just witnessed. In

the old days there had often been scenes of bloodshed equally terrible, but it

seemed to all of them that it was far worse now that it was happening among

themselves. Since Jones had left the farm, until today, no animal had killed

another animal. Not even a rat had been killed. They had made their way on

to the little knoll where the half-ﬁnished windmill stood, and with one accord

they all lay down as though huddling together for warmth — Clover, Muriel,

Benjamin, the cows, the sheep, and a whole ﬂock of geese and hens — everyone,

indeed, except the cat, who had suddenly disappeared just before Napoleon

ordered the animals to assemble. For some time nobody spoke. Only Boxer

remained on his feet. He ﬁdgeted to and fro, swishing his long black tail against

his sides and occasionally uttering a little whinny of surprise. Finally he said:

'I do not understand it. I would not have believed that such things could

happen on our farm. It must be due to some fault in ourselves. The solution, as

I see it, is to work harder. From now onwards I shall get up a full hour earlier

in the mornings.'

And he moved oﬀ at his lumbering trot and made for the quarry. Having

got there, he collected two successive loads of stone and dragged them down to

the windmill before retiring for the night.

The animals huddled about Clover, not speaking. The knoll where they

were lying gave them a wide prospect across the countryside. Most of Animal

Farm was within their view — the long pasture stretching down to the main

road, the hayﬁeld, the spinney, the drinking pool, the ploughed ﬁelds where the

young wheat was thick and green, and the red roofs of the farm buildings with

the smoke curling from the chimneys. It was a clear spring evening. The grass

and the bursting hedges were gilded by the level rays of the sun. Never had the

farm — and with a kind of surprise they remembered that it was their own farm,

every inch of it their own property — appeared to the animals so desirable a

place. As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes ﬁlled with tears. If she could

have spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they

had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow

of the human race. These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had

looked forward to on that night when old Major ﬁrst stirred them to rebellion.

If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of

animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according

to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the lost

brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of Major's speech. Instead —

she did not know why — they had come to a time when no one dared speak

his mind, when ﬁerce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to

watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes. There

was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind. She knew that, even

as things were, they were far better oﬀ than they had been in the days of Jones,

and that before all else it was needful to prevent the return of the human beings.

Whatever happened she would remain faithful, work hard, carry out the orders

that were given to her, and accept the leadership of Napoleon. But still, it was

not for this that she and all the other animals had hoped and toiled. It was not

for this that they had built the windmill and faced the bullets of Jones's gun.

Such were her thoughts, though she lacked the words to express them.

At last, feeling this to be in some way a substitute for the words she was

unable to ﬁnd, she began to sing Beasts of England. The other animals sitting

round her took it up, and they sang it three times over — very tunefully, but

slowly and mournfully, in a way they had never sung it before.

They had just ﬁnished singing it for the third time when Squealer, attended

by two dogs, approached them with the air of having something important to

say. He announced that, by a special decree of Comrade Napoleon, Beasts of

England had been abolished. From now onwards it was forbidden to sing it.

The animals were taken aback.

'Why?' cried Muriel.

'It's no longer needed, comrade,' said Squealer stiﬄy. 'Beasts of England was

the song of the Rebellion. But the Rebellion is now completed. The execution

of the traitors this afternoon was the ﬁnal act. The enemy both external and

internal has been defeated. In Beasts of England we expressed our longing for

a better society in days to come. But that society has now been established.

Clearly this song has no longer any purpose.'

Frightened though they were, some of the animals might possibly have

protested, but at this moment the sheep set up their usual bleating of 'Four

legs good, two legs bad,' which went on for several minutes and put an end to

the discussion.

So Beasts of England was heard no more. In its place Minimus, the poet,

had composed another song which began:

Animal Farm, Animal Farm,

Never through me shalt thou come to harm!

and this was sung every Sunday morning after the hoisting of the ﬂag. But

somehow neither the words nor the tune ever seemed to the animals to come up

to Beasts of England.

VIII

A few days later, when the terror caused by the executions had died down, some

of the animals remembered — or thought they remembered — that the Sixth

Commandment decreed 'No animal shall kill any other animal.' And though no

one cared to mention it in the hearing of the pigs or the dogs, it was felt that the

killings which had taken place did not square with this. Clover asked Benjamin

to read her the Sixth Commandment, and when Benjamin, as usual, said that

he refused to meddle in such matters, she fetched Muriel. Muriel read the

Commandment for her. It ran: 'No animal shall kill any other animal without

cause.' Somehow or other, the last two words had slipped out of the animals'

memory. But they saw now that the Commandment had not been violated; for

clearly there was good reason for killing the traitors who had leagued themselves

with Snowball.

Throughout the year the animals worked even harder than they had worked

in the previous year To rebuild the windmill, with walls twice as thick as before,

and to ﬁnish it by the appointed date, together with the regular work of the

farm, was a tremendous labour. There were times when it seemed to the animals

that they worked longer hours and fed no better than they had done in Jones's

day. On Sunday mornings Squealer, holding down a long strip of paper with his

trotter, would read out to them lists of ﬁgures proving that the production of

every class of foodstuﬀ had increased by two hundred per cent, three hundred

per cent, or ﬁve hundred per cent, as the case might be. The animals saw

no reason to disbelieve him, especially as they could no longer remember very

clearly what conditions had been like before the Rebellion. All the same, there

were days when they felt that they would sooner have had less ﬁgures and more

food.

All orders were now issued through Squealer or one of the other pigs. Napoleon

himself was not seen in public as often as once in a fortnight. When he did ap-

pear, he was attended not only by his retinue of dogs but by a black cockerel

who marched in front of him and acted as a kind of trumpeter, letting out a loud

'cock-a-doodle-doo' before Napoleon spoke. Even in the farmhouse, it was said,

Napoleon inhabited separate apartments from the others. He took his meals

alone, with two dogs to wait upon him, and always ate from the Crown Derby

dinner service which had been in the glass cupboard in the drawing-room. It was

also announced that the gun would be ﬁred every year on Napoleon's birthday,

as well as on the other two anniversaries.

Napoleon was now never spoken of simply as 'Napoleon.' He was always

referred to in formal style as 'our Leader, Comrade Napoleon,' and this pigs

liked to invent for him such titles as Father of All Animals, Terror of Mankind,

Protector of the Sheep-fold, Ducklings' Friend, and the like. In his speeches,

Squealer would talk with the tears rolling down his cheeks of Napoleon's wisdom

the goodness of his heart, and the deep love he bore to all animals everywhere,

even and especially the unhappy animals who still lived in ignorance and slavery

on other farms. It had become usual to give Napoleon the credit for every suc-

cessful achievement and every stroke of good fortune. You would often hear one

hen remark to another, 'Under the guidance of our Leader, Comrade Napoleon,

I have laid ﬁve eggs in six days'; or two cows, enjoying a drink at the pool,

would exclaim, 'Thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon, how excellent

this water tastes!' The general feeling on the farm was well expressed in a poem

entitled Comrade Napoleon, which was composed by Minimus and which ran as

follows:

Friend of fatherless!

Fountain of happiness!

Lord of the swill-bucket! Oh, how my soul is on

Fire when I gaze at thy

Calm and commanding eye,

Like the sun in the sky,

Comrade Napoleon!

Thou are the giver of

All that thy creatures love,

Full belly twice a day, clean straw to roll upon;

Every beast great or small

Sleeps at peace in his stall,

Thou watchest over all,

Comrade Napoleon!

Had I a sucking-pig,

Ere he had grown as big

Even as a pint bottle or as a rolling-pin,

He should have learned to be

Faithful and true to thee,

Yes, his ﬁrst squeak should be

"Comrade Napoleon!"

Napoleon approved of this poem and caused it to be inscribed on the wall

of the big barn, at the opposite end from the Seven Commandments. It was

surmounted by a portrait of Napoleon, in proﬁle, executed by Squealer in white

paint.

Meanwhile, through the agency of Whymper, Napoleon was engaged in com-

plicated negotiations with Frederick and Pilkington. The pile of timber was still

unsold. Of the two, Frederick was the more anxious to get hold of it, but he

would not oﬀer a reasonable price. At the same time there were renewed ru-

mours that Frederick and his men were plotting to attack Animal Farm and

to destroy the windmill, the building of which had aroused furious jealousy in

him. Snowball was known to be still skulking on Pinchﬁeld Farm. In the mid-

dle of the summer the animals were alarmed to hear that three hens had come

forward and confessed that, inspired by Snowball, they had entered into a plot

to murder Napoleon. They were executed immediately, and fresh precautions

for Napoleon's safety were taken. Four dogs guarded his bed at night, one at

each corner, and a young pig named Pinkeye was given the task of tasting all

his food before he ate it, lest it should be poisoned.

At about the same time it was given out that Napoleon had arranged to sell

the pile of timber to Mr. Pilkington; he was also going to enter into a regu-

lar agreement for the exchange of certain products between Animal Farm and

Foxwood. The relations between Napoleon and Pilkington, though they were

only conducted through Whymper, were now almost friendly. The animals dis-

trusted Pilkington, as a human being, but greatly preferred him to Frederick,

whom they both feared and hated. As the summer wore on, and the wind-

mill neared completion, the rumours of an impending treacherous attack grew

stronger and stronger. Frederick, it was said, intended to bring against them

twenty men all armed with guns, and he had already bribed the magistrates

and police, so that if he could once get hold of the title-deeds of Animal Farm

they would ask no questions. Moreover, terrible stories were leaking out from

Pinchﬁeld about the cruelties that Frederick practised upon his animals. He

had ﬂogged an old horse to death, he starved his cows, he had killed a dog

by throwing it into the furnace, he amused himself in the evenings by making

cocks ﬁght with splinters of razor-blade tied to their spurs. The animals' blood

boiled with rage when they heard of these things being done to their comrades,

and sometimes they clamoured to be allowed to go out in a body and attack

Pinchﬁeld Farm, drive out the humans, and set the animals free. But Squealer

counselled them to avoid rash actions and trust in Comrade Napoleon's strategy.

Nevertheless, feeling against Frederick continued to run high. One Sunday

morning Napoleon appeared in the barn and explained that he had never at

any time contemplated selling the pile of timber to Frederick; he considered it

beneath his dignity, he said, to have dealings with scoundrels of that description.

The pigeons who were still sent out to spread tidings of the Rebellion were

forbidden to set foot anywhere on Foxwood, and were also ordered to drop their

former slogan of 'Death to Humanity' in favour of 'Death to Frederick.' In the

late summer yet another of Snowball's machinations was laid bare. The wheat

crop was full of weeds, and it was discovered that on one of his nocturnal visits

Snowball had mixed weed seeds with the seed corn. A gander who had been

privy to the plot had confessed his guilt to Squealer and immediately committed

suicide by swallowing deadly nightshade berries. The animals now also learned

that Snowball had never — as many of them had believed hitherto — received

the order of 'Animal Hero, First Class.' This was merely a legend which had

been spread some time after the Battle of the Cowshed by Snowball himself. So

far from being decorated, he had been censured for showing cowardice in the

battle. Once again some of the animals heard this with a certain bewilderment,

but Squealer was soon able to convince them that their memories had been at

fault.

In the autumn, by a tremendous, exhausting eﬀort — for the harvest had

to be gathered at almost the same time — the windmill was ﬁnished. The

machinery had still to be installed, and Whymper was negotiating the purchase

of it, but the structure was completed. In the teeth of every diﬃculty, in spite of

inexperience, of primitive implements, of bad luck and of Snowball's treachery,

the work had been ﬁnished punctually to the very day! Tired out but proud, the

animals walked round and round their masterpiece, which appeared even more

beautiful in their eyes than when it had been built the ﬁrst time. Moreover,

the walls were twice as thick as before. Nothing short of explosives would lay

them low this time! And when they thought of how they had laboured, what

discouragements they had overcome, and the enormous diﬀerence that would

be made in their lives when the sails were turning and the dynamos running —

when they thought of all this, their tiredness forsook them and they gambolled

round and round the windmill, uttering cries of triumph. Napoleon himself,

attended by his dogs and his cockerel, came down to inspect the completed work;

he personally congratulated the animals on their achievement, and announced

that the mill would be named Napoleon Mill.

Two days later the animals were called together for a special meeting in the

barn. They were struck dumb with surprise when Napoleon announced that he

had sold the pile of timber to Frederick. Tomorrow Frederick's wagons would

arrive and begin carting it away. Throughout the whole period of his seeming

friendship with Pilkington, Napoleon had really been in secret agreement with

Frederick.

All relations with Foxwood had been broken oﬀ; insulting messages had been

sent to Pilkington. The pigeons had been told to avoid Pinchﬁeld Farm and to

alter their slogan from 'Death to Frederick' to 'Death to Pilkington.' At the

same time Napoleon assured the animals that the stories of an impending attack

on Animal Farm were completely untrue, and that the tales about Frederick's

cruelty to his own animals had been greatly exaggerated. All these rumours

had probably originated with Snowball and his agents. It now appeared that

Snowball was not, after all, hiding on Pinchﬁeld Farm, and in fact had never

been there in his life: he was living — in considerable luxury, so it was said —

at Foxwood, and had in reality been a pensioner of Pilkington for years past.

The pigs were in ecstasies over Napoleon's cunning. By seeming to be

friendly with Pilkington he had forced Frederick to raise his price by twelve

pounds. But the superior quality of Napoleon's mind, said Squealer, was shown

in the fact that he trusted nobody, not even Frederick. Frederick had wanted

to pay for the timber with something called a cheque, which, it seemed, was a

piece of paper with a promise to pay written upon it. But Napoleon was too

clever for him. He had demanded payment in real ﬁve-pound notes, which were

to be handed over before the timber was removed. Already Frederick had paid

up; and the sum he had paid was just enough to buy the machinery for the

windmill.

Meanwhile the timber was being carted away at high speed. When it was all

gone, another special meeting was held in the barn for the animals to inspect

Frederick's bank-notes. Smiling beatiﬁcally, and wearing both his decorations,

Napoleon reposed on a bed of straw on the platform, with the money at his

side, neatly piled on a china dish from the farmhouse kitchen. The animals ﬁled

slowly past, and each gazed his ﬁll. And Boxer put out his nose to sniﬀ at the

bank-notes, and the ﬂimsy white things stirred and rustled in his breath.

Three days later there was a terrible hullabaloo. Whymper, his face deadly

pale, came racing up the path on his bicycle, ﬂung it down in the yard and

rushed straight into the farmhouse. The next moment a choking roar of rage

sounded from Napoleon's apartments. The news of what had happened sped

round the farm like wildﬁre. The banknotes were forgeries! Frederick had got

the timber for nothing!

Napoleon called the animals together immediately and in a terrible voice

pronounced the death sentence upon Frederick. When captured, he said, Fred-

erick should be boiled alive. At the same time he warned them that after this

treacherous deed the worst was to be expected. Frederick and his men might

make their long-expected attack at any moment. Sentinels were placed at all the

approaches to the farm. In addition, four pigeons were sent to Foxwood with a

conciliatory message, which it was hoped might re-establish good relations with

Pilkington.

The very next morning the attack came. The animals were at breakfast when

the look-outs came racing in with the news that Frederick and his followers had

already come through the ﬁve-barred gate. Boldly enough the animals sallied

forth to meet them, but this time they did not have the easy victory that they

had had in the Battle of the Cowshed. There were ﬁfteen men, with half a dozen

guns between them, and they opened ﬁre as soon as they got within ﬁfty yards.

The animals could not face the terrible explosions and the stinging pellets, and

in spite of the eﬀorts of Napoleon and Boxer to rally them, they were soon driven

back. A number of them were already wounded. They took refuge in the farm

buildings and peeped cautiously out from chinks and knot-holes. The whole of

the big pasture, including the windmill, was in the hands of the enemy. For

the moment even Napoleon seemed at a loss. He paced up and down without

a word, his tail rigid and twitching. Wistful glances were sent in the direction

of Fox wood. If Pilkington and his men would help them, the day might yet be

won. But at this moment the four pigeons, who had been sent out on the day

before, returned, one of them bearing a scrap of paper from Pilkington. On it

was pencilled the words: 'Serves you right.'

Meanwhile Frederick and his men had halted about the windmill. The an-

imals watched them, and a murmur of dismay went round. Two of the men

had produced a crowbar and a sledge hammer. They were going to knock the

windmill down.

'Impossible!' cried Napoleon. 'We have built the walls far too thick for that.

They could not knock it down in a week. Courage, comrades!'

But Benjamin was watching the movements of the men intently. The two

with the hammer and the crowbar were drilling a hole near the base of the

windmill. Slowly, and with an air almost of amusement, Benjamin nodded his

long muzzle.

'I thought so,' he said. 'Do you not see what they are doing? In another

moment they are going to pack blasting powder into that hole.'

Terriﬁed, the animals waited. It was impossible now to venture out of the

shelter of the buildings. After a few minutes the men were seen to be running

in all directions. Then there was a deafening roar. The pigeons swirled into the

air, and all the animals, except Napoleon, ﬂung themselves ﬂat on their bellies

and hid their faces. When they got up again, a huge cloud of black smoke was

hanging where the windmill had been. Slowly the breeze drifted it away. The

windmill had ceased to exist!

At this sight the animals' courage returned to them. The fear and despair

they had felt a moment earlier were drowned in their rage against this vile,

contemptible act. A mighty cry for vengeance went up, and without waiting for

further orders they charged forth in a body and made straight for the enemy.

This time they did not heed the cruel pellets that swept over them like hail.

It was a savage, bitter battle. The men ﬁred again and again, and, when the

animals got to close quarters, lashed out with their sticks and their heavy boots.

A cow, three sheep, and two geese were killed, and nearly everyone was wounded.

Even Napoleon, who was directing operations from the rear, had the tip of his

tail chipped by a pellet. But the men did not go unscathed either. Three of

them had their heads broken by blows from Boxer's hoofs; another was gored

in the belly by a cow's horn; another had his trousers nearly torn oﬀ by Jessie

and Bluebell. And when the nine dogs of Napoleon's own bodyguard, whom he

had instructed to make a detour under cover of the hedge, suddenly appeared

on the men's ﬂank, baying ferociously, panic overtook them. They saw that

they were in danger of being surrounded. Frederick shouted to his men to get

out while the going was good, and the next moment the cowardly enemy was

running for dear life. The animals chased them right down to the bottom of the

ﬁeld, and got in some last kicks at them as they forced their way through the

thorn hedge.

They had won, but they were weary and bleeding. Slowly they began to

limp back towards the farm. The sight of their dead comrades stretched upon

the grass moved some of them to tears. And for a little while they halted in

sorrowful silence at the place where the windmill had once stood. Yes, it was

gone; almost the last trace of their labour was gone! Even the foundations were

partially destroyed. And in rebuilding it they could not this time, as before,

make use of the fallen stones. This time the stones had vanished too. The force

of the explosion had ﬂung them to distances of hundreds of yards. It was as

though the windmill had never been.

As they approached the farm Squealer, who had unaccountably been absent

during the ﬁghting, came skipping towards them, whisking his tail and beam-

ing with satisfaction. And the animals heard, from the direction of the farm

buildings, the solemn booming of a gun.

'What is that gun ﬁring for?' said Boxer.

'To celebrate our victory!' cried Squealer.

'What victory?' said Boxer. His knees were bleeding, he had lost a shoe and

split his hoof, and a dozen pellets had lodged themselves in his hind leg.

'What victory, comrade? Have we not driven the enemy oﬀ our soil — the

sacred soil of Animal Farm?'

'But they have destroyed the windmill. And we had worked on it for two

years!'

'What matter? We will build another windmill. We will build six windmills

if we feel like it. You do not appreciate, comrade, the mighty thing that we

have done. The enemy was in occupation of this very ground that we stand

upon. And now — thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon — we have

won every inch of it back again!'

'Then we have won back what we had before,' said Boxer.

'That is our victory,' said Squealer.

They limped into the yard. The pellets under the skin of Boxer's leg smarted

painfully. He saw ahead of him the heavy labour of rebuilding the windmill from

the foundations, and already in imagination he braced himself for the task. But

for the ﬁrst time it occurred to him that he was eleven years old and that

perhaps his great muscles were not quite what they had once been.

But when the animals saw the green ﬂag ﬂying, and heard the gun ﬁring

again — seven times it was ﬁred in all — and heard the speech that Napoleon

made, congratulating them on their conduct, it did seem to them after all that

they had won a great victory. The animals slain in the battle were given a

solemn funeral. Boxer and Clover pulled the wagon which served as a hearse,

and Napoleon himself walked at the head of the procession. Two whole days

were given over to celebrations. There were songs, speeches, and more ﬁring of

the gun, and a special gift of an apple was bestowed on every animal, with two

ounces of corn for each bird and three biscuits for each dog. It was announced

that the battle would be called the Battle of the Windmill, and that Napoleon

had created a new decoration, the Order of the Green Banner, which he had

conferred upon himself. In the general rejoicings the unfortunate aﬀair of the

banknotes was forgotten.

It was a few days later than this that the pigs came upon a case of whisky

in the cellars of the farmhouse. It had been overlooked at the time when the

house was ﬁrst occupied. That night there came from the farmhouse the sound

of loud singing, in which, to everyone's surprise, the strains of Beasts of England

were mixed up. At about half past nine Napoleon, wearing an old bowler hat of

Mr. Jones's, was distinctly seen to emerge from the back door, gallop rapidly

round the yard, and disappear in doors again. But in the morning a deep silence

hung over the farmhouse. Not a pig appeared to be stirring. It was nearly nine

o'clock when Squealer made his appearance, walking slowly and dejectedly, his

eyes dull, his tail hanging limply behind him, and with every appearance of

being seriously ill. He called the animals together and told them that he had a

terrible piece of news to impart. Comrade Napoleon was dying!

A cry of lamentation went up. Straw was laid down outside the doors of

the farmhouse, and the animals walked on tiptoe. With tears in their eyes

they asked one another what they should do if their Leader were taken away

from them. A rumour went round that Snowball had after all contrived to

introduce poison into Napoleon's food. At eleven o'clock Squealer came out to

make another announcement. As his last act upon earth, Comrade Napoleon

had pronounced a solemn decree: the drinking of alcohol was to be punished by

death.

By the evening, however, Napoleon appeared to be somewhat better, and

the following morning Squealer was able to tell them that he was well on the

way to recovery. By the evening of that day Napoleon was back at work, and

on the next day it was learned that he had instructed Whymper to purchase

in Willingdon some booklets on brewing and distilling. A week later Napoleon

gave orders that the small paddock beyond the orchard, which it had previously

been intended to set aside as a grazing-ground for animals who were past work,

was to be ploughed up. It was given out that the pasture was exhausted and

needed re-seeding; but it soon became known that Napoleon intended to sow it

with barley.

About this time there occurred a strange incident which hardly anyone was

able to understand. One night at about twelve o'clock there was a loud crash

in the yard, and the animals rushed out of their stalls. It was a moonlit night.

At the foot of the end wall of the big barn, where the Seven Commandments

were written, there lay a ladder broken in two pieces. Squealer, temporarily

stunned, was sprawling beside it, and near at hand there lay a lantern, a paint-

brush, and an overturned pot of white paint. The dogs immediately made a

ring round Squealer, and escorted him back to the farmhouse as soon as he was

able to walk. None of the animals could form any idea as to what this meant,

except old Benjamin, who nodded his muzzle with a knowing air, and seemed

to understand, but would say nothing.

But a few days later Muriel, reading over the Seven Commandments to

herself, noticed that there was yet another of them which the animals h

remembered wrong. They had thought the Fifth Commandment was 'No animal

shall drink alcohol,' but there were two words that they had forgotten. Actually

the Commandment read: 'No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.'

Boxer's split hoof was a long time in healing. They had started the rebuilding

of the windmill the day after the victory celebrations were ended Boxer refused

to take even a day oﬀ work, and made it a point of honour not to let it be seen

that he was in pain. In the evenings he would admit privately to Clover that

the hoof troubled him a great deal. Clover treated the hoof with poultices of

herbs which she prepared by chewing them, and both she and Benjamin urged

Boxer to work less hard. 'A horse's lungs do not last for ever,' she said to him.

But Boxer would not listen. He had, he said, only one real ambition left — to

see the windmill well under way before he reached the age for retirement.

At the beginning, when the laws of Animal Farm were ﬁrst formulated, the

retiring age had been ﬁxed for horses and pigs at twelve, for cows at fourteen,

for dogs at nine, for sheep at seven, and for hens and geese at ﬁve. Liberal

old-age pensions had been agreed upon. As yet no animal had actually retired

on pension, but of late the subject had been discussed more and more. Now

that the small ﬁeld beyond the orchard had been set aside for barley, it was

rumoured that a corner of the large pasture was to be fenced oﬀ and turned

into a grazing-ground for superannuated animals. For a horse, it was said, the

pension would be ﬁve pounds of corn a day and, in winter, ﬁfteen pounds of hay,

with a carrot or possibly an apple on public holidays. Boxer's twelfth birthday

was due in the late summer of the following year.

Meanwhile life was hard. The winter was as cold as the last one had been,

and food was even shorter. Once again all rations were reduced, except those

of the pigs and the dogs. A too rigid equality in rations, Squealer explained,

would have been contrary to the principles of Animalism. In any case he had

no diﬃculty in proving to the other animals that they were not in reality short

of food, whatever the appearances might be. For the time being, certainly, it

had been found necessary to make a readjustment of rations (Squealer always

spoke of it as a 'readjustment,' never as a 'reduction'), but in comparison with

the days of Jones, the improvement was enormous. Reading out the ﬁgures in

a shrill, rapid voice, he proved to them in detail that they had more oats, more

hay, more turnips than they had had in Jones's day, that they worked shorter

hours, that their drinking water was of better quality, that they lived longer,

that a larger proportion of their young ones survived infancy, and that they

had more straw in their stalls and suﬀered less from ﬂeas. The animals believed

every word of it. Truth to tell, Jones and all he stood for had almost faded out

of their memories. They knew that life nowadays was harsh and bare, that they

were often hungry and often cold, and that they were usually working when

they were not asleep. But doubtless it had been worse in the old days. They

were glad to believe so. Besides, in those days they had been slaves and now

they were free, and that made all the diﬀerence, as Squealer did not fail to point

out.

There were many more mouths to feed now. In the autumn the four sows

had all littered about simultaneously, producing thirty-one young pigs between

them. The young pigs were piebald, and as Napoleon was the only boar on

the farm, it was possible to guess at their parentage. It was announced that

later, when bricks and timber had been purchased, a schoolroom would be built

in the farmhouse garden. For the time being, the young pigs were given their

instruction by Napoleon himself in the farmhouse kitchen. They took their

exercise in the garden, and were discouraged from playing with the other young

animals. About this time, too, it was laid down as a rule that when a pig and

any other animal met on the path, the other animal must stand aside: and also

that all pigs, of whatever degree, were to have the privilege of wearing green

ribbons on their tails on Sundays.

The farm had had a fairly successful year, but was still short of money. There

were the bricks, sand, and lime for the schoolroom to be purchased, and it would

also be necessary to begin saving up again for the machinery for the windmill.

Then there were lamp oil and candles for the house, sugar for Napoleon's own

table (he forbade this to the other pigs, on the ground that it made them fat),

and all the usual replacements such as tools, nails, string, coal, wire, scrap-iron,

and dog biscuits. A stump of hay and part of the potato crop were sold oﬀ,

and the contract for eggs was increased to six hundred a week, so that that year

the hens barely hatched enough chicks to keep their numbers at the same level.

Rations, reduced in December, were reduced again in February, and lanterns in

the stalls were forbidden to save Oil. But the pigs seemed comfortable enough,

and in fact were putting on weight if anything. One afternoon in late February

a warm, rich, appetising scent, such as the animals had never smelt before,

wafted itself across the yard from the little brew-house, which had been disused

in Jones's time, and which stood beyond the kitchen. Someone said it was the

smell of cooking barley. The animals sniﬀed the air hungrily and wondered

whether a warm mash was being prepared for their supper. But no warm

mash appeared, and on the following Sunday it was announced that from now

onwards all barley would be reserved for the pigs. The ﬁeld beyond the orchard

had already been sown with barley. And the news soon leaked out that every

pig was now receiving a ration of a pint of beer daily, with half a gallon for

Napoleon himself, which was always served to him in the Crown Derby soup

tureen.

But if there were hardships to be borne, they were partly oﬀset by the fact

that life nowadays had a greater dignity than it had had before. There were more

songs, more speeches, more processions. Napoleon had commanded that once

a week there should be held something called a Spontaneous Demonstration,

the object of which was to celebrate the struggles and triumphs of Animal

Farm. At the appointed time the animals would leave their work and march

round the precincts of the farm in military formation, with the pigs leading,

then the horses, then the cows, then the sheep, and then the poultry. The

dogs ﬂanked the procession and at the head of all marched Napoleon's black

cockerel. Boxer and Clover always carried between them a green banner marked

with the hoof and the horn and the caption, 'Long live Comrade Napoleon! '

Afterwards there were recitations of poems composed in Napoleon's honour, and

a speech by Squealer giving particulars of the latest increases in the production

of foodstuﬀs, and on occasion a shot was ﬁred from the gun. The sheep were the

greatest devotees of the Spontaneous Demonstration, and if anyone complained

(as a few animals sometimes did, when no pigs or dogs were near) that they

wasted time and meant a lot of standing about in the cold, the sheep were sure

to silence him with a tremendous bleating of 'Four legs good, two legs bad!' But

by and large the animals enjoyed these celebrations. They found it comforting

to be reminded that, after all, they were truly their own masters and that the

work they did was for their own beneﬁt. So that, what with the songs, the

processions, Squealer's lists of ﬁgures, the thunder of the gun, the crowing of

the cockerel, and the ﬂuttering of the ﬂag, they were able to forget that their

bellies were empty, at least part of the time.

In April, Animal Farm was proclaimed a Republic, and it became necessary

to elect a President. There was only one candidate, Napoleon, who was elected

unanimously. On the same day it was given out that fresh documents had

been discovered which revealed further details about Snowball's complicity with

Jones. It now appeared that Snowball had not, as the animals had previously

imagined, merely attempted to lose the Battle of the Cowshed by means of

a stratagem, but had been openly ﬁghting on Jones's side. In fact, it was

he who had actually been the leader of the human forces, and had charged

into battle with the words 'Long live Humanity!' on his lips. The wounds on

Snowball's back, which a few of the animals still remembered to have seen, had

been inﬂicted by Napoleon's teeth.

In the middle of the summer Moses the raven suddenly reappeared on the

farm, after an absence of several years. He was quite unchanged, still did no

work, and talked in the same strain as ever about Sugarcandy Mountain. He

would perch on a stump, ﬂap his black wings, and talk by the hour to anyone

who would listen. 'Up there, comrades,' he would say solemnly, pointing to the

sky with his large beak — 'up there, just on the other side of that dark cloud that

you can see — there it lies, Sugarcandy Mountain, that happy country where we

poor animals shall rest for ever from our labours!' He even claimed to have been

there on one of his higher ﬂights, and to have seen the everlasting ﬁelds of clover

and the linseed cake and lump sugar growing on the hedges. Many of the animals

believed him. Their lives now, they reasoned, were hungry and laborious; was it

not right and just that a better world should exist somewhere else? A thing that

was diﬃcult to determine was the attitude of the pigs towards Moses. They all

declared contemptuously that his stories about Sugarcandy Mountain were lies,

and yet they allowed him to remain on the farm, not working, with an allowance

of a gill of beer a day.

After his hoof had healed up, Boxer worked harder than ever. Indeed, all the

animals worked like slaves that year. Apart from the regular work of the farm,

and the rebuilding of the windmill, there was the schoolhouse for the young

pigs, which was started in March. Sometimes the long hours on insuﬃcient

food were hard to bear, but Boxer never faltered. In nothing that he said or did

was there any sign that his strength was not what it had been. It was only his

appearance that was a little altered; his hide was less shiny than it had used to

be, and his great haunches seemed to have shrunken. The others said, 'Boxer

will pick up when the spring grass comes on'; but the spring came and Boxer

grew no fatter. Sometimes on the slope leading to the top of the quarry, when

he braced his muscles against the weight of some vast boulder, it seemed that

nothing kept him on his feet except the will to continue. At such times his lips

were seen to form the words, 'I will work harder'; he had no voice left. Once

again Clover and Benjamin warned him to take care of his health, but Boxer

paid no attention. His twelfth birthday was approaching. He did not care what

happened so long as a good store of stone was accumulated before he went on

pension.

Late one evening in the summer, a sudden rumour ran round the farm that

something had happened to Boxer. He had gone out alone to drag a load of

stone down to the windmill. And sure enough, the rumour was true. A few

minutes later two pigeons came racing in with the news: 'Boxer has fallen! He

is lying on his side and can't get up!'

About half the animals on the farm rushed out to the knoll where the wind-

mill stood. There lay Boxer, between the shafts of the cart, his neck stretched

out, unable even to raise his head. His eyes were glazed, his sides matted with

sweat. A thin stream of blood had trickled out of his mouth. Clover dropped

to her knees at his side.

'Boxer!' she cried, 'how are you?'

'It is my lung,' said Boxer in a weak voice. 'It does not matter. I think you

will be able to ﬁnish the windmill without me. There is a pretty good store of

stone accumulated. I had only another month to go in any case. To tell you the

truth, I had been looking forward to my retirement. And perhaps, as Benjamin

is growing old too, they will let him retire at the same time and be a companion

to me.'

'We must get help at once,' said Clover. 'Run, somebody, and tell Squealer

what has happened.'

All the other animals immediately raced back to the farmhouse to give

Squealer the news. Only Clover remained, and Benjamin7 who lay down at

Boxer's side, and, without speaking, kept the ﬂies oﬀ him with his long tail. Af-

ter about a quarter of an hour Squealer appeared, full of sympathy and concern.

He said that Comrade Napoleon had learned with the very deepest distress of

this misfortune to one of the most loyal workers on the farm, and was already

making arrangements to send Boxer to be treated in the hospital at Willingdon.

The animals felt a little uneasy at this. Except for Mollie and Snowball, no

other animal had ever left the farm, and they did not like to think of their sick

comrade in the hands of human beings. However, Squealer easily convinced

them that the veterinary surgeon in Willingdon could treat Boxer's case more

satisfactorily than could be done on the farm. And about half an hour later,

when Boxer had somewhat recovered, he was with diﬃculty got on to his feet,

and managed to limp back to his stall, where Clover and Benjamin had prepared

a good bed of straw for him.

For the next two days Boxer remained in his stall. The pigs had sent out a

large bottle of pink medicine which they had found in the medicine chest in the

bathroom, and Clover administered it to Boxer twice a day after meals. In the

evenings she lay in his stall and talked to him, while Benjamin kept the ﬂies oﬀ

him. Boxer professed not to be sorry for what had happened. If he made a good

recovery, he might expect to live another three years, and he looked forward to

the peaceful days that he would spend in the corner of the big pasture. It

would be the ﬁrst time that he had had leisure to study and improve his mind.

He intended, he said, to devote the rest of his life to learning the remaining

twenty-two letters of the alphabet.

However, Benjamin and Clover could only be with Boxer after working hours,

and it was in the middle of the day when the van came to take him away. The

animals were all at work weeding turnips under the supervision of a pig, when

they were astonished to see Benjamin come galloping from the direction of the

farm buildings, braying at the top of his voice. It was the ﬁrst time that they

had ever seen Benjamin excited — indeed, it was the ﬁrst time that anyone

had ever seen him gallop. 'Quick, quick!' he shouted. 'Come at once! They're

taking Boxer away!' Without waiting for orders from the pig, the animals broke

oﬀ work and raced back to the farm buildings. Sure enough, there in the yard

was a large closed van, drawn by two horses, with lettering on its side and a

sly-looking man in a low-crowned bowler hat sitting on the driver's seat. And

Boxer's stall was empty.

The animals crowded round the van. 'Good-bye, Boxer!' they chorused,

'good-bye!'

'Fools! Fools!' shouted Benjamin, prancing round them and stamping the

earth with his small hoofs. 'Fools! Do you not see what is written on the side

of that van?'

That gave the animals pause, and there was a hush. Muriel began to spell

out the words. But Benjamin pushed her aside and in the midst of a deadly

silence he read:

' 'Alfred Simmonds, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willingdon. Dealer

in Hides and Bone-Meal. Kennels Supplied.' Do you not understand what that

means? They are taking Boxer to the knacker's!'

A cry of horror burst from all the animals. At this moment the man on the

box whipped up his horses and the van moved out of the yard at a smart trot.

All the animals followed, crying out at the tops of their voices. Clover forced her

way to the front. The van began to gather speed. Clover tried to stir her stout

limbs to a gallop, and achieved a canter. 'Boxer!' she cried. 'Boxer! Boxer!

Boxer!' And just at this moment, as though he had heard the uproar outside,

Boxer's face, with the white stripe down his nose, appeared at the small window

at the back of the van.

'Boxer!' cried Clover in a terrible voice. 'Boxer! Get out! Get out quickly!

They're taking you to your death!'

All the animals took up the cry of 'Get out, Boxer, get out!' But the van

was already gathering speed and drawing away from them. It was uncertain

whether Boxer had understood what Clover had said. But a moment later his

face disappeared from the window and there was the sound of a tremendous

drumming of hoofs inside the van. He was trying to kick his way out. The time

had been when a few kicks from Boxer's hoofs would have smashed the van to

matchwood. But alas! his strength had left him; and in a few moments the sound

of drumming hoofs grew fainter and died away. In desperation the animals began

appealing to the two horses which drew the van to stop. 'Comrades, comrades!'

they shouted. 'Don't take your own brother to his death! ' But the stupid

brutes, too ignorant to realise what was happening, merely set back their ears

and quickened their pace. Boxer's face did not reappear at the window. Too

late, someone thought of racing ahead and shutting the ﬁve-barred gate; but

in another moment the van was through it and rapidly disappearing down the

road. Boxer was never seen again.

Three days later it was announced that he had died in the hospital at Will-

ingdon, in spite of receiving every attention a horse could have. Squealer came

to announce the news to the others. He had, he said, been present during

Boxer's last hours.

'It was the most aﬀecting sight I have ever seen!' said Squealer, lifting his

trotter and wiping away a tear. 'I was at his bedside at the very last. And at

the end, almost too weak to speak, he whispered in my ear that his sole sorrow

was to have passed on before the windmill was ﬁnished. 'Forward, comrades!'

he whispered. 'Forward in the name of the Rebellion. Long live Animal Farm!

Long live Comrade Napoleon! Napoleon is always right.' Those were his very

last words, comrades.'

Here Squealer's demeanour suddenly changed. He fell silent for a moment,

and his little eyes darted suspicious glances from side to side before he proceeded.

It had come to his knowledge, he said, that a foolish and wicked rumour had

been circulated at the time of Boxer's removal. Some of the animals had noticed

that the van which took Boxer away was marked 'Horse Slaughterer,' and had

actually jumped to the conclusion that Boxer was being sent to the knacker's.

It was almost unbelievable, said Squealer, that any animal could be so stupid.

Surely, he cried indignantly, whisking his tail and skipping from side to side,

surely they knew their beloved Leader, Comrade Napoleon, better than that?

But the explanation was really very simple. The van had previously been the

property of the knacker, and had been bought by the veterinary surgeon, who

had not yet painted the old name out. That was how the mistake had arisen.

The animals were enormously relieved to hear this. And when Squealer went

on to give further graphic details of Boxer's death-bed, the admirable care he

had received, and the expensive medicines for which Napoleon had paid without

a thought as to the cost, their last doubts disappeared and the sorrow that they

felt for their comrade's death was tempered by the thought that at least he had

died happy.

Napoleon himself appeared at the meeting on the following Sunday morning

and pronounced a short oration in Boxer's honour. It had not been possible,

he said, to bring back their lamented comrade's remains for interment on the

farm, but he had ordered a large wreath to be made from the laurels in the

farmhouse garden and sent down to be placed on Boxer's grave. And in a few

days' time the pigs intended to hold a memorial banquet in Boxer's honour.

Napoleon ended his speech with a reminder of Boxer's two favourite maxims, 'I

will work harder' and 'Comrade Napoleon is always right' — maxims, he said,

which every animal would do well to adopt as his own.

On the day appointed for the banquet, a grocer's van drove up from Will-

ingdon and delivered a large wooden crate at the farmhouse. That night there

was the sound of uproarious singing, which was followed by what sounded like

a violent quarrel and ended at about eleven o'clock with a tremendous crash of

glass. No one stirred in the farmhouse before noon on the following day, and

the word went round that from somewhere or other the pigs had acquired the

money to buy themselves another case of whisky.

Years passed. The seasons came and went, the short animal lives ﬂed by. A

time came when there was no one who remembered the old days before the

Rebellion, except Clover, Benjamin, Moses the raven, and a number of the pigs.

Muriel was dead; Bluebell, Jessie, and Pincher were dead. Jones too was

dead — he had died in an inebriates' home in another part of the country.

Snowball was forgotten. Boxer was forgotten, except by the few who had known

him. Clover was an old stout mare now, stiﬀ in the joints and with a tendency

to rheumy eyes. She was two years past the retiring age, but in fact no animal

had ever actually retired. The talk of setting aside a corner of the pasture

for superannuated animals had long since been dropped. Napoleon was now

a mature boar of twenty-four stone. Squealer was so fat that he could with

diﬃculty see out of his eyes. Only old Benjamin was much the same as ever,

except for being a little greyer about the muzzle, and, since Boxer's death, more

morose and taciturn than ever.

There were many more creatures on the farm now, though the increase was

not so great as had been expected in earlier years. Many animals had been

born to whom the Rebellion was only a dim tradition, passed on by word of

mouth, and others had been bought who had never heard mention of such a

thing before their arrival. The farm possessed three horses now besides Clover.

They were ﬁne upstanding beasts, willing workers and good comrades, but very

stupid. None of them proved able to learn the alphabet beyond the letter B.

They accepted everything that they were told about the Rebellion and the

principles of Animalism, especially from Clover, for whom they had an almost

ﬁlial respect; but it was doubtful whether they understood very much of it.

The farm was more prosperous now, and better organised: it had even been

enlarged by two ﬁelds which had been bought from Mr. Pilkington. The wind-

mill had been successfully completed at last, and the farm possessed a thresh-

ing machine and a hay elevator of its own, and various new buildings had been

added to it. Whymper had bought himself a dogcart. The windmill, however,

had not after all been used for generating electrical power. It was used for

milling corn, and brought in a handsome money proﬁt. The animals were hard

at work building yet another windmill; when that one was ﬁnished, so it was

said, the dynamos would be installed. But the luxuries of which Snowball had

once taught the animals to dream, the stalls with electric light and hot and

cold water, and the three-day week, were no longer talked about. Napoleon

had denounced such ideas as contrary to the spirit of Animalism. The truest

happiness, he said, lay in working hard and living frugally.

Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making

the animals themselves any richer — except, of course, for the pigs and the

dogs. Perhaps this was partly because there were so many pigs and so many

dogs. It was not that these creatures did not work, after their fashion. There

was, as Squealer was never tired of explaining, endless work in the supervision

and organisation of the farm. Much of this work was of a kind that the other

animals were too ignorant to understand. For example, Squealer told them that

the pigs had to expend enormous labours every day upon mysterious things

called 'ﬁles,' 'reports,' 'minutes,' and 'memoranda.' These were large sheets of

paper which had to be closely covered with writing, and as soon as they were so

covered, they were burnt in the furnace. This was of the highest importance for

the welfare of the farm, Squealer said. But still, neither pigs nor dogs produced

any food by their own labour; and there were very many of them, and their

appetites were always good.

As for the others, their life, so far as they knew, was as it had always been.

They were generally hungry, they slept on straw, they drank from the pool, they

laboured in the ﬁelds; in winter they were troubled by the cold, and in summer

by the ﬂies. Sometimes the older ones among them racked their dim memories

and tried to determine whether in the early days of the Rebellion, when Jones's

expulsion was still recent, things had been better or worse than now. They

could not remember. There was nothing with which they could compare their

present lives: they had nothing to go upon except Squealer's lists of ﬁgures,

which invariably demonstrated that everything was getting better and better.

The animals found the problem insoluble; in any case, they had little time for

speculating on such things now. Only old Benjamin professed to remember

every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever

could be much better or much worse — hunger, hardship, and disappointment

being, so he said, the unalterable law of life.

And yet the animals never gave up hope. More, they never lost, even for an

instant, their sense of honour and privilege in being members of Animal Farm.

They were still the only farm in the whole county — in all England! — owned

and operated by animals. Not one of them, not even the youngest, not even

the newcomers who had been brought from farms ten or twenty miles away,

ever ceased to marvel at that. And when they heard the gun booming and saw

the green ﬂag ﬂuttering at the masthead, their hearts swelled with imperishable

pride, and the talk turned always towards the old heroic days, the expulsion of

Jones, the writing of the Seven Commandments, the great battles in which the

human invaders had been defeated. None of the old dreams had been abandoned.

The Republic of the Animals which Major had foretold, when the green ﬁelds

of England should be untrodden by human feet, was still believed in. Some

day it was coming: it might not be soon, it might not be with in the lifetime

of any animal now living, but still it was coming. Even the tune of Beasts of

England was perhaps hummed secretly here and there: at any rate, it was a

fact that every animal on the farm knew it, though no one would have dared

to sing it aloud. It might be that their lives were hard and that not all of their

hopes had been fulﬁlled; but they were conscious that they were not as other

animals. If they went hungry, it was not from feeding tyrannical human beings;

if they worked hard, at least they worked for themselves. No creature among

them went upon two legs. No creature called any other creature 'Master.' All

animals were equal.

One day in early summer Squealer ordered the sheep to follow him, and led

them out to a piece of waste ground at the other end of the farm, which had

become overgrown with birch saplings. The sheep spent the whole day there

browsing at the leaves under Squealer's supervision. In the evening he returned

to the farmhouse himself, but, as it was warm weather, told the sheep to stay

where they were. It ended by their remaining there for a whole week, during

which time the other animals saw nothing of them. Squealer was with them for

the greater part of every day. He was, he said, teaching them to sing a new

song, for which privacy was needed.

It was just after the sheep had returned, on a pleasant evening when the

animals had ﬁnished work and were making their way back to the farm buildings,

that the terriﬁed neighing of a horse sounded from the yard. Startled, the

animals stopped in their tracks. It was Clover's voice. She neighed again, and

all the animals broke into a gallop and rushed into the yard. Then they saw

what Clover had seen.

It was a pig walking on his hind legs.

Yes, it was Squealer. A little awkwardly, as though not quite used to sup-

porting his considerable bulk in that position, but with perfect balance, he was

strolling across the yard. And a moment later, out from the door of the farm-

house came a long ﬁle of pigs, all walking on their hind legs. Some did it better

than others, one or two were even a triﬂe unsteady and looked as though they

would have liked the support of a stick, but every one of them made his way

right round the yard successfully. And ﬁnally there was a tremendous baying

of dogs and a shrill crowing from the black cockerel, and out came Napoleon

himself, majestically upright, casting haughty glances from side to side, and

with his dogs gambolling round him.

He carried a whip in his trotter.

There was a deadly silence. Amazed, terriﬁed, huddling together, the an-

imals watched the long line of pigs march slowly round the yard. It was as

though the world had turned upside-down. Then there came a moment when

the ﬁrst shock had worn oﬀ and when, in spite of everything — in spite of their

terror of the dogs, and of the habit, developed through long years, of never

complaining, never criticising, no matter what happened — they might have

uttered some word of protest. But just at that moment, as though at a signal,

all the sheep burst out into a tremendous bleating of —

'Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs

good, two legs better!'

It went on for ﬁve minutes without stopping. And by the time the sheep

had quieted down, the chance to utter any protest had passed, for the pigs had

marched back into the farmhouse.

Benjamin felt a nose nuzzling at his shoulder. He looked round. It was

Clover. Her old eyes looked dimmer than ever. Without saying anything, she

tugged gently at his mane and led him round to the end of the big barn, where

the Seven Commandments were written. For a minute or two they stood gazing

at the tatted wall with its white lettering.

'My sight is failing,' she said ﬁnally. 'Even when I was young I could not have

read what was written there. But it appears to me that that wall looks diﬀerent.

Are the Seven Commandments the same as they used to be, Benjamin?'

For once Benjamin consented to break his rule, and he read out to her what

was written on the wall. There was nothing there now except a single Com-

mandment. It ran:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL

BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

After that it did not seem strange when next day the pigs who were su-

pervising the work of the farm all carried whips in their trotters. It did not

seem strange to learn that the pigs had bought themselves a wireless set, were

arranging to install a telephone, and had taken out subscriptions to John Bull,

TitBits, and the Daily Mirror. It did not seem strange when Napoleon was

seen strolling in the farmhouse garden with a pipe in his mouth — no, not even

when the pigs took Mr. Jones's clothes out of the wardrobes and put them on,

Napoleon himself appearing in a black coat, ratcatcher breeches, and leather

leggings, while his favourite sow appeared in the watered silk dress which Mrs.

Jones had been used to wear on Sundays.

A week later, in the afternoon, a number of dogcarts drove up to the farm.

A deputation of neighbouring farmers had been invited to make a tour of in-

spection. They were shown all over the farm, and expressed great admiration

for everything they saw, especially the windmill. The animals were weeding the

turnip ﬁeld. They worked diligently hardly raising their faces from the ground,

and not knowing whether to be more frightened of the pigs or of the human

visitors.

That evening loud laughter and bursts of singing came from the farmhouse.

And suddenly, at the sound of the mingled voices, the animals were stricken

with curiosity. What could be happening in there, now that for the ﬁrst time

animals and human beings were meeting on terms of equality? With one accord

they began to creep as quietly as possible into the farmhouse garden.

At the gate they paused, half frightened to go on but Clover led the way in.

They tiptoed up to the house, and such animals as were tall enough peered in at

the dining-room window. There, round the long table, sat half a dozen farmers

and half a dozen of the more eminent pigs, Napoleon himself occupying the seat

of honour at the head of the table. The pigs appeared completely at ease in

their chairs The company had been enjoying a game of cards but had broken oﬀ

for the moment, evidently in order to drink a toast. A large jug was circulating,

and the mugs were being reﬁlled with beer. No one noticed the wondering faces

of the animals that gazed in at the window.

Mr. Pilkington, of Foxwood, had stood up, his mug in his hand.

In amoment, he said, he would ask the present company to drink a toast. But

before doing so, there were a few words that he felt it incumbent upon him to

say.

It was a source of great satisfaction to him, he said — and, he was sure, to all

others present — to feel that a long period of mistrust and misunderstanding

had now come to an end. There had been a time — not that he, or any of

the present company, had shared such sentiments — but there had been a time

when the respected proprietors of Animal Farm had been regarded, he would

not say with hostility, but perhaps with a certain measure of misgiving, by their

human neighbours. Unfortunate incidents had occurred, mistaken ideas had

been current. It had been felt that the existence of a farm owned and operated

by pigs was somehow abnormal and was liable to have an unsettling eﬀect in

the neighbourhood. Too many farmers had assumed, without due enquiry, that

on such a farm a spirit of licence and indiscipline would prevail. They had been

nervous about the eﬀects upon their own animals, or even upon their human

employees. But all such doubts were now dispelled. Today he and his friends

had visited Animal Farm and inspected every inch of it with their own eyes, and

what did they ﬁnd? Not only the most up-to-date methods, but a discipline

and an orderliness which should be an example to all farmers everywhere. He

believed that he was right in saying that the lower animals on Animal Farm did

more work and received less food than any animals in the county. Indeed, he

and his fellow-visitors today had observed many features which they intended

to introduce on their own farms immediately.

He would end his remarks, he said, by emphasising once again the friendly

feelings that subsisted, and ought to subsist, between Animal Farm and its

neighbours. Between pigs and human beings there was not, and there need

not be, any clash of interests whatever. Their struggles and their diﬃculties

were one. Was not the labour problem the same everywhere? Here it became

apparent that Mr. Pilkington was about to spring some carefully prepared

witticism on the company, but for a moment he was too overcome by amusement

to be able to utter it. After much choking, during which his various chins turned

purple, he managed to get it out: 'If you have your lower animals to contend

with,' he said, 'we have our lower classes!' This bon mot set the table in a

roar; and Mr. Pilkington once again congratulated the pigs on the low rations,

the long working hours, and the general absence of pampering which he had

observed on Animal Farm.

And now, he said ﬁnally, he would ask the company to rise to their feet and

make certain that their glasses were full. 'Gentlemen,' concluded Mr. Pilking-

ton, 'gentlemen, I give you a toast: To the prosperity of Animal Farm!'

There was enthusiastic cheering and stamping of feet. Napoleon was so grat-

iﬁed that he left his place and came round the table to clink his mug against Mr.

Pilkington's before emptying it. When the cheering had died down, Napoleon,

who had remained on his feet, intimated that he too had a few words to say.

Like all of Napoleon's speeches, it was short and to the point. He too, he said,

was happy that the period of misunderstanding was at an end. For a long time

there had been rumours — circulated, he had reason to think, by some malignant

enemy — that there was something subversive and even revolutionary in the

outlook of himself and his colleagues. They had been credited with attempting

to stir up rebellion among the animals on neighbouring farms. Nothing could

be further from the truth! Their sole wish, nowand in the past, was to live at

peace and in normal business relations with their neighbours. This farm which

he had the honour to control, he added, was a co-operative enterprise. The

title-deeds, which were in his own possession, were owned by the pigs jointly.

He did not believe, he said, that any of the old suspicions still lingered, but

certain changes had been made recently in the routine of the farm which should

have the eﬀect of promoting conﬁdence stiﬀ further. Hitherto the animals on the

farm had had a rather foolish custom of addressing one another as 'Comrade.'

This was to be suppressed. There had also been a very strange custom, whose

origin was unknown, of marching every Sunday morning past a boar's skull

which was nailed to a post in the garden. This, too, would be suppressed, and

the skull had already been buried. His visitors might have observed, too, the

green ﬂag which ﬂew from the masthead. If so, they would perhaps have noted

that the white hoof and horn with which it had previously been marked had

now been removed. It would be a plain green ﬂag from now onwards.

He had only one criticism, he said, to make of Mr. Pilkington's excellent

and neighbourly speech. Mr. Pilkington had referred throughout to 'Animal

Farm.' He could not of course know — for he, Napoleon, was only now for the

ﬁrst time announcing it — that the name 'Animal Farm' had been abolished.

Henceforward the farm was to be known as 'The Manor Farm' — which, he

believed, was its correct and original name.

'Gentlemen,' concluded Napoleon, 'I will give you the same toast as before,

but in a diﬀerent form. Fill your glasses to the brim. Gentlemen, here is my

toast: To the prosperity of The Manor Farm! '

There was the same hearty cheering as before, and the mugs were emptied

to the dregs. But as the animals outside gazed at the scene, it seemed to them

that some strange thing was happening. What was it that had altered in the

faces of the pigs? Clover's old dim eyes ﬂitted from one face to another. Some

of them had ﬁve chins, some had four, some had three. But what was it that

seemed to be melting and changing? Then, the applause having come to an

end, the company took up their cards and continued the game that had been

interrupted, and the animals crept silently away.

But they had not gone twenty yards when they stopped short. An uproar of

voices was coming from the farmhouse. They rushed back and looked through

the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were shoutings,

bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials. The source of

the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington had each played

an ace of spades simultaneously.

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question,

now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. 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.

VIGNESH

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Animal Farm

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