Boxer and Clover are used by Orwell to represent the proletariat, or the working class, in Russian society. This lower class is naturally drawn to Stalin (represented by Napoleon) because it seems as though they will benefit most from his new system. Since Boxer and the other low animals are not accustomed to the "good life," they can't really compare Napoleon's government to the life they had before under Jones. The proletariat are also quite good at convincing each other that communism is a good idea, ‘they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the others’.
Boxer’s hardworking nature is displayed throughout the book. For example, the animals spent weeks and weeks building a windmill, and when one morning they woke up to find it had been destroyed, all the animals were distraught, except Boxer. Boxer’s solution to this problem, and many others, was ‘I will work harder!’ However, Boxer doesn’t see that he is overworking himself, and no matter what Benjamin and Clover try to tell him, he insists that everything will be solved if he works harder. Also, Boxer is a simple character and, like most of the other animals, doesn’t see that the pigs are taking advantage, and after Snowball is overthrown, Boxer lives by his two mottoes ‘I will work harder’ and ‘Napoleon is always right’.
Old Benjamin, an elderly donkey, is unchanged by the rebellion. He still does his work the same way, never becoming too exited or too disappointed about anything that has passed. Benjamin explains, ‘Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey.’ Although there is no clear link between Benjamin and the revolution, he represents the people who never totally embrace the revolution - those so cynical they no longer look to their leaders for help. Benjamin symbolises the older generation, the critics of any new rebellion. Really, this old donkey is the only animal that seems as though he couldn't care less about Napoleon and Animal Farm. It's almost as if he can see into the future, knowing that the revolt is only a temporary change, and will flop in the end. Benjamin is the only animal who doesn't seem to have expected anything positive from the revolution, and he doesn’t appear to react to anything the pigs do. He almost seems on a whole different maturity lever compared to the other animals, and he is not sucked in by Napoleon's propaganda like the others.
When Boxer is taken ill, the pigs take advantage of him, even then. They don’t appreciate any of what Boxer has done at all, and they claim to be taking him to the vets to be treated, when really they have just sold his body to the knackers. The only time Benjamin seems to care about anything at all is when Boxer is carried off in the glue truck. The only time we see him animated at all is when he gallops over to warn the others of Boxers fate. This scene also tells us that he can read, as he knows what’s on the side of the van, but he never wished to exercise this ability.
After Boxer dies, the pigs evilly use the money they get for his body on alcohol for themselves, without any consideration for the rest of the farm. The end of the book shows how the leaders of the Russian Revolution turned out to be just as bad, if not worse than the czars, ‘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.’ George Orwell put Boxer in the story and killed him to show that all his hard work, like the proletariats in the Russian Revolution, was for nothing and that, in the end, it would always go back to the way it was at the beginning. This is something that Benjamin knew all the way through, and after the animals have forgotten Jones and their past lives, ‘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.’
