Bank-notes

Napoleon, through the intermediary Mr. Whymper, negotiated the sale of the farm's timber pile to Mr. Frederick of Pinchfield Farm. Frederick initially wanted to pay with a cheque, a piece of paper promising payment, but Napoleon, showing his cunning, demanded real five-pound notes, to be handed over before the timber was removed. Frederick paid up, and the sum was exactly enough to buy the machinery for the windmill. The pigs were ecstatic over Napoleon's supposed cleverness, believing he had forced Frederick to raise his price by twelve pounds and had outsmarted him by insisting on cash.

Once the timber was carted away, a special meeting was held in the barn for the animals to inspect Frederick's bank-notes. Napoleon, smiling beatifically and wearing both his medals, reposed on a bed of straw on the platform, with the money neatly piled on a china dish from the farmhouse kitchen. The animals filed slowly past, each gazing their fill; Boxer put out his nose to sniff the bank-notes, and the flimsy white things stirred and rustled in his breath. The scene was a ceremonial display of the pigs' wealth and power, a marked contrast to the revolutionary ideals of rejecting money and trade.

Three days later, a terrible hullabaloo erupted. Mr. Whymper, his face deadly pale, raced up the path on his bicycle, flung it down, and rushed into the farmhouse. A choking roar of rage sounded from Napoleon's apartments. The news spread like wildfire: the bank-notes were forgeries. Frederick had got the timber for nothing. The revelation plunged the farm into crisis, as the long-expected attack from Frederick followed immediately, leading to the Battle of the Windmill, in which the windmill was destroyed by explosives. The bank-notes became a symbol of the pigs' failed venture into human commerce and their own corruption.

Objectively, the bank-notes represent a pivotal moment in the pigs' transformation from revolutionary leaders to exploiters. Old Major had explicitly forbidden animals to touch money or engage in trade, yet Napoleon not only traded with humans but was tricked by the very human duplicity he claimed to outsmart. The bank-notes, displayed as a trophy of Napoleon's cunning, were actually tokens of his gullibility and the abandonment of Animalism's principles. The forgery exposed the inherent dangers of dealing with humans, but rather than reject trade, the pigs continued their dealings, eventually becoming indistinguishable from the humans they once overthrew.