Leader

The idea of a leader was, from the start, a contradiction to the founding principles of Animal Farm. Old Major, in his seminal speech, had explicitly forbidden any animal from ever 'tyrannise over his own kind' and insisted that 'All animals are equal.' The early Rebellion was a collective act; the animals destroyed the symbols of Mr. Jones's authority—the whips, bits, nose-rings, and degrading nosebags—and flung them onto a rubbish fire, celebrating their liberation from a single human master. In those first days, leadership was diffused: Snowball and Napoleon shared the platform, and the Sunday Meetings allowed every animal to vote on resolutions. Yet within months, Napoleon began to lay the groundwork for a very different kind of leadership. He secretly raised nine puppies into a private guard, and when the moment came to eliminate his rival Snowball, he summoned those dogs—now enormous and fierce—to chase Snowball off the farm. The dogs, who wagged their tails at Napoleon as they had once done to Mr. Jones, became the physical instrument of his authority. Almost immediately after Snowball's expulsion, Napoleon abolished the Sunday Meetings, announcing that all decisions would be made by a special committee of pigs presided over by himself. The animals were dismayed, but the dogs' growling and the sheep's interminable bleating of 'Four legs good, two legs bad' silenced any protest. The office of Leader had been created, and it was filled by a single, unchallengeable figure.

Once Napoleon's personal supremacy was secured, the pigs set about constructing a cult of leadership. Squealer began referring to Napoleon as 'the Leader'—a title that subtly elevated him above all other animals. Soon, Napoleon was never spoken of simply by name; he was always 'our Leader, Comrade Napoleon,' and the pigs invented a string of flattering epithets: Father of All Animals, Terror of Mankind, Protector of the Sheep-fold, Ducklings' Friend. In his speeches, Squealer would weep as he described Napoleon's wisdom, goodness of heart, and deep love for all animals. Every success—a hen's five eggs in six days, the excellent taste of the drinking water—was credited to the Leader's guidance. The poet Minimus composed a hymn, 'Comrade Napoleon,' which was inscribed on the wall of the barn opposite the Seven Commandments, surmounted by a portrait of Napoleon in profile. Weekly Spontaneous Demonstrations were held, with the animals marching in military formation behind a green banner bearing the slogan 'Long live Comrade Napoleon!' The gun was fired on Napoleon's birthday, and the skull of Old Major was set up on a stump at the foot of the flagstaff, so that the animals had to file past it reverently before receiving their orders. These rituals—the flag, the songs, the processions, the constant recitation of figures proving that everything was getting better—created a dense ideological atmosphere in which the Leader's authority seemed both natural and inevitable.

But the Leader's power was never merely symbolic; it rested on a foundation of terror and on the systematic rewriting of the farm's own history. Napoleon's dogs, now nine in number, served as his secret police. When four pigs dared to protest the abolition of the Meetings, the dogs tore their throats out after a forced confession. The same fate befell the hens who had resisted the egg surrender, and a goose, a sheep, and others who confessed to crimes supposedly inspired by the phantom Snowball. These executions were presented as necessary acts of justice, and the Sixth Commandment was quietly altered to read 'No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.' The memory of the past was also manipulated: Snowball's role in the Battle of the Cowshed was erased, and he was recast as a traitor in league with Jones from the very beginning. The animals, bullied by the dogs and bombarded by Squealer's figures, came to accept these revisions. Meanwhile, the Leader's own lifestyle diverged more and more from the revolutionary ideals. The pigs moved into the farmhouse, slept in the beds (with the sheets removed, as Squealer argued), and began to drink alcohol. Napoleon took his meals alone from the Crown Derby dinner service, with two dogs to wait on him, and a young pig named Pinkeye tasted all his food for poison. The fields that had been set aside for retired animals were ploughed up to grow barley for the pigs' beer. The Leader's privileges were justified by the claim that the pigs were 'brainworkers' whose health was essential to the farm's survival—a claim the other animals, hungry and exhausted, had no way to challenge.

In the final stage of his transformation, Napoleon abandoned the last vestiges of animal identity and became indistinguishable from the human beings he had replaced. The pigs began to walk on their hind legs, with Napoleon himself appearing in the yard carrying a whip and wearing Mr. Jones's old clothes—a black coat, ratcatcher breeches, and leather leggings. The Seven Commandments were reduced to a single maxim: 'ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.' The animals were forbidden to call one another 'Comrade,' the skull of Old Major was buried, and the green flag was stripped of the hoof and horn to become a plain green banner. Most tellingly, Napoleon announced that the farm would revert to its original name, 'The Manor Farm,' and he entertained a deputation of neighbouring farmers. As the pigs and the farmers drank together, the animals peering through the window saw that the faces of the pigs and the men had become impossible to tell apart. The Leader had completed the circle: what began as a principled rejection of human tyranny ended with the Leader himself becoming a human-style tyrant, indistinguishable from the enemy the Rebellion had set out to destroy.