George Orwell, Animal Farm
Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had
locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the
pop-holes. 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. Almost 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 themselves. 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.
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 animals 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 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 necessary arts from books which they had
brought out of the farmhouse. Snowball also busied himself with organising the other
animals into what he called Animal Committees. He was indefatigable at this. He
formed the Egg Production Committee for the hens, the Clean Tails League for
the cows, the Wild Comrades’ 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 education 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 education. 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 Animal 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 animals 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 managed 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 flogging 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 puppies 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 portion 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 Snowball, 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 onwards Animal Farm would engage in trade with the
neighbouring farms: not, of course, for any commercial purpose, but simply in
order to obtain certain materials 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 imagination, 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 diagrams that 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 Commandment 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!”
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 time the quarry was full
of snowdrifts and nothing could be done. Some progress was made in the dry
frosty weather 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. Emboldened 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 determined 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 Snowball 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 moments 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’.
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 appear, 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 successful 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 complicated 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 rumours 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 middle 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 regular 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 distrusted Pilkington, as a human being, but greatly
preferred him to Frederick, whom they both feared and hated. As the summer wore
on, and the windmill 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, Frederick 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 Foxwood. 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 animals 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 beaming 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 indoors
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 had 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 windmill 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
Benjamin who lay down at Boxer’s side, and, without speaking, kept the flies
off him with his long tail. After 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 Willingdon, 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 Willingdon 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 windmill had been successfully completed at last, and
the farm possessed a threshing 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 supporting 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 farmhouse 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 animals 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 Commandment. 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 supervising 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’, ‘Tit-Bits’, 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 wearing on Sundays.
A week later, in the afternoon, a
number of dog-carts drove up to the farm. A deputation of neighbouring farmers
had been invited to make a tour of inspection. 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 a moment, 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. Pilkington, “gentlemen, I give you a toast: To
the prosperity of Animal Farm!”
There was enthusiastic cheering and
stamping of feet. Napoleon was so gratified 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, now and 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 still 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.
November 1943-February 1944