Compare and contrast snowball & napoleon -evaluate their respective qualities for leadership, -how do the animals respond to each and why are their responses different?- why does napoleon constantly use snowball as a scapegoat?

 Snowball on the other hand, is an innovative, vivacious pig, and a great talker. He talked quicker than Napoleon and could invent ideas faster. Snowball is seen to be more enthusiastic in managing farm affairs. An example of the above is when “Snowball who had studied an old book of Julius Caesars campaigns which he had found in the farmhouse, was in charge of the defensive operations.’  This shows how active he was by reading all the books he could find and educating himself and taking the responsibility on him to defend the farm. It is he who argues with the animals over the necessity to work for the rebellion. After the rebellion, it is he who writes out the seven commandments. Napoleon, however, remains quiet.  Snowball is very active and wants to organize everything and just never stops running around, even though he has good intentions in what he is doing he never sees what Napoleon is up to because he is too caught up in doing all this tings at once and rushing into learning and writing. This is the disadvantage which brought Snowball down. Also when Snowball had organized a few committees to help the animals which ended in a disaster like the committee to tame wild animals “The attempt to tame wild animals, for instance, broke down immediately” and this again was used later on by Napoleon to show that Snowball was incapable of doing things. This was all due to his rush and miscalculations.

When it comes down to who had greater leadership skills in the beginning we see two very obvious reasons why it was Snowball rather than Napoleon. In the battle of the cowshed it is Snowball that is the hero of the day. We see Snowball attack first “Snowball launched his first attack”  and it was Snowball that was heading the attack and who got hurt “ The pellets scored bloody streaks along Snowballs back. Without halting for an instant Snowball flung his fifteen stone against Jones’s Leg” The Hero of the day who truly fling himself into battle was in fact Snowball. He gave everything he had and risked his life for the whole of Animal Farm and that is what a true leader is base upon. Where as Napoleon was nowhere to be found at the time of the battle. Of course later on through propaganda Napoleon is praised as the “Hero” of this battle but that still comes to show that a leader is praised through his heroic actions at a battle. Therefore Snowball should have rightfully been the leader. The second reason is that Snowball was always organizing certain committees to involve the people and mostly educate them. Some of the projects were a failure however a leader must try and even if he fails he must try again and that was what Snowball was doing. He was encouraging the animals to work together for a future of their own. Unlike Napoleon, this brought terror later on and used it to do things his way and to exclude the pigs from the rest of the animals.  Napoleon's lust for power increases to the point where he becomes a totalitarian dictator, forcing "confessions" from innocent animals and having the dogs kill them in front of the entire farm. However there is some cruelty in Snowball as well as he says at one point “a good human is a dead human” which in a way shows some hatred drawn in to Snowball which seems unnecessary and could cause problems in the future.

Napoleon continues to use Snowball as a scapegoat for all the problems being faced by the community.  He suggests that Snowball has always been a traitor and that he is working with the farmers to overthrow animalism on Animal Farm. In order to support the view that Snowball is a traitor, Napoleon needs to spread some propaganda. This is a clever move by Napoleon as he knows that in fact all these problems encountered by the farm as mostly from lack of attention by the pigs and the lack or proper planning. There is nothing easier than to point the finger to someone else and that is what Napoleon does and gets away with it in the end.

The two pigs started off from the beginning with a set of different characters, one would rule and one would go. We cannot really say that they both had the same vision at the beginning and we definitely cannot say that we would have the same outcome in either of the two leaderships. A slight point which is being made there by the Author in my opinion is that the one who is stronger physically and has more power in the form of terror almost wins no matter how smart or kind his opponent is. In this case we witness a strong Napoleon taking over and a smart helpful Snowball being thrown out of the farm.