Fourth Commandment: No animal shall sleep in a bed

The Fourth Commandment, as originally inscribed on the tarred wall of the big barn, read: "No animal shall sleep in a bed." This prohibition was one of the Seven Commandments that Snowball, with Squealer holding the paint-pot, wrote in great white letters after the Rebellion. It derived directly from Old Major's speech, in which he had declared that no animal must ever sleep in a bed, as such habits were among the vices of Man that must not be adopted. The animals unanimously agreed to this rule, and the cleverer ones memorized it.

Because the stupider animals could not learn the Seven Commandments by heart, Snowball reduced them to a single maxim: "Four legs good, two legs bad." This slogan, while capturing the essence of Animalism, omitted the specific prohibitions of the Commandments, including the one against beds. The sheep later developed a great liking for this maxim and would bleat it for hours, often interrupting debates at crucial moments.

Months after the Rebellion, the pigs moved into the farmhouse and began sleeping in the beds. Clover, who remembered a ruling against beds, fetched Muriel to read the Fourth Commandment from the wall. To her surprise, the text now read: "No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets." The addition of the last two words made the pigs' behavior permissible. Squealer, passing by with two or three dogs, explained that a bed merely meant a place to sleep in; the real prohibition was against sheets, which were a human invention. The pigs had removed the sheets, so they were not breaking the rule. The animals, not wanting to see Jones back, accepted the explanation.

The same pattern of silent alteration affected the other Commandments. The Fifth Commandment became "No animal shall drink alcohol to excess," and the Sixth became "No animal shall kill any other animal without cause." By the end of the story, the entire wall bore only a single commandment: "ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS." The original Fourth Commandment, along with the others, had been effectively erased. The pigs now walked on their hind legs, wore clothes, and carried whips, and when the neighboring farmers visited, it was impossible to distinguish pig from man.

The evolution of the Fourth Commandment exemplifies how the pigs used legal language to legitimize their privileges. The original blanket prohibition became a conditional rule that could be reinterpreted through a single added phrase, and finally discarded altogether when it no longer served the ruling class. The animals' inability to remember the precise wording and their fear of Jones's return made them accept each revision without protest. The commandment thus became a tool of ideology, masking inequality under the guise of legal continuity.