Even in the first chapter of the novel Orwell describes the pigs as “the cleaver ones”, next to the dogs. Orwell describes Napoleon as being “large” “fierce-looking Berkshire boar” with a reputation of getting his own way. As old Major, another pig with the dream of running the farm, dies. The two main pigs which take over the leadership, when they have overthrown Mr. Jones, is Napoleon and Snowball who are recognised as being “the cleverest” of the animals.
The pigs decide to write down a list of seven “commandments”: whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy, whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend, no animals shall wear clothes, no animal shall sleep in a bed, no animal shall drink alcohol, no animal shall kill any other animal, and all animals are equal, which during the novel the pigs break all of these. Napoleon then decides to milk the cows which he later takes for the himself and the rest of the pigs, Napoleon also takes apples for the rest of the pigs. Napoleon and the other pigs also do no physical work around the farm, they just give orders to the other animals, while the pigs think of ways to use the equipment and improve the farm. Their excuse for taking the milk and the extra food was because they needed it to help them think.
The animals decide to hold debates and Napoleon and Snowball are the most active in these debates but “these two were never in agreement”. During The Battle of the Cowshed Napoleon is not mentioned in the fight, however Snowball shows extreme courage and bravery as he runs towards Mr. Jones with the gun, so that Snowball was making sure that he wouldn’t harm another animal. Napoleon decided that he wanted to take a litter of pups, so e could bring them up himself.
Snowball then proposes a plan to build a windmill and Napoleon is against this idea from the very beginning. During one of the gatherings between all the animals Napoleon summons his pack of vicious dogs which chase Snowball away from the farm forever, giving Napoleon more control over the rest of the animals. Even after all of this Napoleon decides to go ahead with the building of the windmill and takes credit for it.
Napoleon made all the other animals work like “slaves” to get the windmill built, but when the storm hits, the windmill is destroyed and Napoleon blames this incident on Snowball. Then following incidents and accidents happen on the farm and Napoleon blames all of these on Snowball and the animals believe this.
Napoleon announces that there will be no more meetings in the farm house, and even the younger pigs try to speak up about this, but are soon silenced with the growl of the vicious dogs. Then Napoleon and the rest of the pigs move into Mr. Jones’ house, this is when they start breaking the “commandments”, they sleep in the beds and drink alcohol. To stop the other animals rebelling against them, Napoleon orders Squealer to change the commandments in the middle of the night.
When Napoleon had the final meeting between all the animals, he forced explanations out of the animals because he thought they were conspiring against him and working with Snowball. He ordered his dogs to kill a lot of the animals this made them very scared and timid and they never questioned Napoleons doings. Again Napoleon made Squealer change another one of the commandments.
Years went by on Animal Farm, they had completed the original windmill and many more were built, Napoleon started trading with the surrounding farms and the rest of the original animals could hardly remember the days of Mr. Jones, and they were brainwashed in to thinking that this way of life was the best, being forced to work constantly by Napoleon.
Napoleon invited the humans over from the neighbouring farms to see all the work he had forced his “fellow comrades” to do. They started walking on their hind-legs and wearing clothes. When he sat around the table with the other humans his face transformed and the animals looked in from the window outside and looked “from man to pig and from pig to man” and noticed no difference between their facial features.
The major themes of this novel are rebellion, hatred, bullying, supremacy and survival.
The theme I have chosen to write about is bullying. This theme occurs in the novel between Napoleon and Snowball, even in their discussions at the meetings they never agreed with each other and they were always against each other’s plans. Napoleon had a notion that if he gets the upper hand on Snowball he will win in the end. So he has to plan his tactics that Snowball won’t realise what he is doing, so he can take over the farm by himself.
Snowball was the main pig that came up with the commandments so that these would bring peace to the farm, Snowball was expecting that these rules would never be broken and that “all animals are equal”, would stop even the cleverest animals from taking advantage of their position and others. Even when the commandments were reduced to one single commandment, so that the “stupidest” of animals would remember “Four legs good, two lags bad”. But the birds were against this; Snowball convinced them that this was not the case as a birds wing was “an organ of propulsion and not of manipulation”. Snowball also set up committees to make all the animals feel of importance but Napoleon “took no interest in Snowball’s committees”.
The first time Mr. Jones tried to reclaim the farm Snowball had a strategy to get rid of him again, and he stayed all through the battle giving orders as to when each group of animals should attack and in the novel it specifies “Snowball lunched his first attack”. It was also Snowballs plan to lure Mr. Jones and the rest of the men inside the “yard” so that all the animals could attack, but Snowball showing great bravery charged towards Mr. Jones, who had a gun, raised his gun and fired “the pellets scored bloody streaks along Snowballs back”, and yet Snowball still continued to charge towards him and he threw his fifteen stone of weight towards Jones’s legs. After all of this Snowball is awarded “animal hero, first class”. Later on in the novel Napoleon says that this is just a scheme as Snowballs, to make the other animals believe that he is not working for Mr. Jones and the other animals believe this.
Snowball was reading a book on innovations and improvements and thought that that after reading this it would be a good idea to build a windmill But Napoleon says quietly “that Snowball’s would come to nothing”. He says this referring to Snowball’s schemes on the plans of the windmill. Snowball wanted this windmill to be built so that it would benefit the other animals, provide electricity to the farm so that the pigs could use some of the machines on the farm, the electricity would light the stalls and warm them in the winter. The windmill would also bring more leisure time to the animals. Napoleon “declared himself against the windmill from the very start”.
Even Snowball declared that it would not be easy to build the windmill, but later in the novel Napoleon forces the others to make it. The animals realise that Mr. Jones might come back to the farm and make a more determined effort to capture it, Napoleons answer to this is violence, to teach the others how to use firearms, however Snowballs approach to this was more diplomatic, to send pigeons to the surrounding farms to stir up rebellion, so that he hoped the other farms would side with Animal Farm. Snowball then spent weeks drawing up detailed of the windmill and how to go about building it. Orwell shows Napoleons nasty behaviour when he says that he “urinated over the plans and walked out without uttering a word”.
Finally when Snowball has finished the plans, the animals hold a meeting and Napoleon got up and uttered “that the windmill was nonsense and that he advised nobody to vote for it”. It was at this point Napoleon summoned his pack of nine “enormous dogs” and they chased Snowball off the farm forever.
When Snowball is gone Napoleon uses him as his scapegoat, and blames him for all the accidents and his wrong doings and he also blames him for his own mistakes, he convinces the other animals that this is the case and they all believe him, partly because some of the animals are too stupid to speak up and partly because they are all too scared due to Napoleons bullying.
Three moments which i would consider to be key moments in this novel are when the animals first take over the farm, the building of the windmill, and when the pigs started acting like humans.
I would consider when the animals take over the farm to be a key moment because this is the start of what they thought to be their freedom and the animals dream for what they had long hoped to achieve. Old Major having suffered a life with his master Mr. Jones thinks it is time for the other animals to have change, in a life of freedom and a life free from a nasty, drunken master. Mr. Jones and his men repeatedly forgot to feed the animals “this was more than the hungry animals could bear”, and so this was the start of their rebellion. This sudden uproar of the animals completely frightened their masters and so Mr. Jones and his men all ran out of the farm, they did not expect this kind of behaviour from their animals. This I would consider to be the most important key moment in the book, because after this the animals take it upon themselves to run the farm, and this is the turning point in the novel, when Orwell puts the animals in groups of cleaver and stupid animals. Then the intelligent new leaders, the pigs decide to take over and run the farm, until they become greedy, power- hungry, controlling and nasty, and the pigs even turned on themselves, with constant disagreeing and at the end, they became what all the animals hated the most.
I also consider when the pigs think of building the windmill as a key moment in the novel. Snowball initially decides to make the plans for the windmill as he thinks it would be a great benefit to the others as it would give them more leisure time, electricity to light the stalls and provide the animals with heat during the winter and it would also provide the pigs electricity so they could use some of the machinery on the farm. Until Napoleon chased Snowball off the farm and took these plans for himself, and forced the animals into strenuous labour to get the windmill finished, even towards the end of the novel when they had finished the first windmill, Napoleon obviously wasn’t satisfied with just the one as he had forced them to build many more. This I would consider to be another key moment in the novel because Napoleon turns against one of his fellow “comrades” and defies all of the
“Commandments”, which turns the farm into disorder as Napoleon thinks that he is better than these rules, which they had come up with to bring peace and order to the farm, and he thinks he can start to change them, but even the other wouldn’t disagree and soon they became scared to rise up against him because of the horrors they experienced when they witnessed the killings of their fellow animals. The windmill also claimed the life of a very respected, hard- working and humble member of their group, a horse called Boxer, who used to get up early every morning to drag more rock that the animals had quarried, until he collapsed due to exhaustion, and Napoleon sold him to the “knackers”.
At the end of the novel, after the pigs had moved into the house, had been drinking alcohol, sleeping in the beds, and even kill some of their fellow animals, One day they came out of the house, all of the pigs, walking on their hind legs dressed in Mr. Jones’ old, discarded clothes, with the vicious pack of dogs at Napoleons every command. After they had broken all of the rules they changed the commandments to one final rule, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. After the pigs mastered walking on their hind legs they invited other farmers around to look at Napoleons achievements and they sat around the table playing cards and drinking alcohol, and when the older animals looked in at this they saw no difference between the faces of the men and the pigs as they all sat together complimenting each other of their achievements on their farms. This i also find to be an important moment in the novel as the pigs turned into what they despised the most, what they tried not to be and what treated them like dirt for all the things they were forced to do. They had turned into the cruel being that was mankind
In association to the cultural background of novel, there were very different attitudes towards social classes and social conventions in this, and there is also the importance of religious beliefs.
There were very different attitudes towards social classed in this novel as Orwell broke all the animals up from the cleverest, the pigs and then the dogs, to the stupidest animals of the hens and the sheep. Then naturally because the pigs were the cleverest, they became the new leaders and took over the farm. At first they wanted to find ways to improve the farm and they held meetings or conventions and the pigs discussed ways to improve the farm, and the other animals just agreed to all of the pig’s suggestions. Then the pigs had a disagreement amongst themselves and turn nasty and aggressive. As all the stupider animals agreed to everything that the pigs said, this gave them more power when they realised that the others were not going to rise up against them and they would not contradict them.
The pigs took advantage of the less cleaver animals and when the pigs forced them to build the windmills they treated them like “slaves” to get them finished. The pigs then being the higher class, above all the other animals decided that they could then disobey all the rules of the farm and the other animals wouldn’t disagree, and even if they did the pigs they could convince them that this was not true and they started to change them so that the pigs then would not be against the new rules.
One of the main pigs brought up a vicious pack of dogs, again if the other animals had the courage to rebel against the pigs, Napoleon could just command his vicious pack of dogs as he already did in the novel when he became paranoid that Snowball had a plan against him .
The importance of religious beliefs also occurs in this novel as they had a list of “commandments” that they created to bring stability, peace and order to their new human free farm. These list of commandments are whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy, whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend, no animals shall wear clothes, no animal shall sleep in a bed, no animal shall drink alcohol, no animal shall kill any other animal, and all animals are equal.
These commandments to me would be associated with religious beliefs in the novel as all the animals turn to them for stability and guidance, while they had freedom and no real masters to dictate to them. It was the pigs that came up with these rules and all the other animals just nodded in agreement when they were discussing them. After this when it was obvious that the pigs became the new leaders they started to disobey these rules and they changed them in the middle of the night fitting them around what they did for example; no animal shall drink alcohol, they changed to no animal shall drink alcohol to excess. The pigs decided to do this with all of the commandments as they disobeyed them because they didn’t want the other stupider animals to revolt and they could convince them that this was not the case anyway.
As the pigs disobey these rules they gradually begin to act more and more human, what in the first lace these rules were created to stop them from becoming, the thing they hated the most dominant and authoritarian, and becoming like humans.
My response to this novel is that, I enjoyed it because it shows hoe life works, as in the novel when the pigs turn against the commandments and start to take advantage of the less wittier animals and they kill them, humans also do this by means of war. It also shows how gullible some of the animals can be, that they would believe anything said to them by the more intelligent.
I also liked this novel because it depicts how cruel humans can be towards animals, as shown by the pigs as they soon became what they hated the most, and they became controlling and they thought that they were better than everyone else.
I would recommend this novel as it is a timeless classic that depicts sheer power- hungry, controlling and paranoid behaviour. The novel also shows how a person or an animal would do anything to be a powerful leader, from killing others in front of their own kind to getting someone that is good at convincing others in the way that they want.