Chapter Plot Summary of Animal Farm - Study Guide by George Orwell

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."

The animals name their victory "The Battle of the Cowshed" and declare it a national holiday. Boxer and Snowball are awarded medals for their valour. Mollie, the vain and frivolous horse, is seen talking to a man. She soon deserts the farm and is taken on by a man who feeds her and pets her. As winter draws on, cold and unforgiving, the pigs exert their power more and more: "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". Furthermore, the rift between Napoleon and Snowball widens as they begin to argue about all manner of things. It is a battle of power and there will be only one winner. Snowball is the better speaker, and Orwell’s sympathies are certainly with him. However Napoleon is manipulative and conniving, raising support for himself with the weaker animals, getting the sheep to bleat during Snowball’s speeches, and whilst the other animals admire Snowball’s plans for a windmill,

"He (Napoleon) 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."

Napoleon is more pragmatic than Snowball. He is less eloquent and less intelligent, but he knows what issues the animals care most about: "Vote for Napoleon and the full manger" is his rally cry in a brilliant parody of modern politics. We can here see Orwell’s attention to the difference between Trotsky and Stalin. The rift between Snowball and Napoleon represents the disagreement between various Communist factions. Some took Trotsky’s view: industrialisation and expansionism. Some took Stalin’s way: agriculture and consolidation within the Soviet Union. This is demonstrated most clearly in the question of the windmill. When the animals meet to discuss whether or not it should be built, the sheep try to bleat down Snowball. As the meeting reaches its climax, Napoleon calls in the dogs that he has been specially training, and they attack Snowball and drive him from the farm. The animals, though dismayed, cannot express their feelings:

"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."

Language, like all other parts of animal life which can be used for dissident purposes, is controlled by the ruling elite.

Napoleon creates a ceremony to replace the Sunday meeting where Old Major’s skull is paraded past, and the dead boar is held up as a patriarchal figure for the animals to worship. Democracy is no longer even pretended at. Napoleon now decides to build the windmill after all. It is revealed that it was his idea originally and was stolen and used by Snowball as a political initiative. No reason is given as to why Napoleon has performed such a volte-face. The animals begin to work on the windmill, whilst the pigs show how far they have moved away from the original Seven Commandments by beginning to trade with humans at neighbouring farms.

The pigs carry on consolidating their totalitarian state. Animals are executed in the Sunday meetings and "Beasts of England" is banned as the song’s aim – the perfect state – has, according to the pigs, been achieved. The chickens are stirred to rebellion when Napoleon tries to take the hens’ eggs and exchange them for grain, the winter having been long and cruel. Napoleon simply cuts off their food. They give up after nine hens have died.

Napoleon holds purges, even from within his own circle of pigs, to create a regime of fear within the farm. Even Boxer is attacked by the dogs, who are Napoleon’s secret police force, after the reservations he shows about Snowball’s role in the Battle of the Cowshed. The animals realise that their new state of enslavement is a mere mirror of what went before under the humans. Clover, regards the farm for which she had such hopes: "Never had the farm- and with a kind of surprise they remembered it was