Chapter The Seven Commandments of Animal Farm - Study Guide by George Orwell

The Seven Commandments

The Seven Commandments are as follows:

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.

The Seven Commandments are violated almost as soon as they are written. When gathering in the harvest, the pigs take control: "With their superior knowledge it was natural that they should assume the leadership". Orwell here acknowledges that humans are not equal and that those who are more talented will through Darwinian selection rise above those who are less able. Through the Seven Commandments the community is focused outwards according to them once man (Capitalism) is removed then the animals (the workers) will be in a state of utopia. The tenets of the society do not set down in enough detail exactly how this period of utopia will function once it is arrived at. Above all, Orwell’s novel highlights a fact made crushingly obvious by the fall of Communism in the nineteen nineties: that man cannot exist without leadership. That a community which tries to rule itself from within will fall prey to the ambition of men who bend the tenets of the society to serve their own will.