Modified Sixth Commandment: No animal shall kill any other animal without cause

A few days after the terror of the executions had subsided, the animals on Animal Farm were troubled by a nagging memory. They recalled that the Sixth Commandment, inscribed on the end wall of the big barn, had once decreed "No animal shall kill any other animal." Yet the recent slaughter of those who had confessed to conspiring with Snowball seemed to contradict this. Clover, seeking confirmation, first asked Benjamin to read the commandment, but the donkey refused to meddle. She then fetched Muriel, who spelled out the words: "No animal shall kill any other animal without cause." Somehow, the last two words had slipped from the animals' collective memory. With the addition of "without cause," the executions were now seen as lawful, since there was clearly good reason for killing the traitors who had leagued themselves with Snowball. This discovery, however, did not erase the underlying unease; it merely papered over the contradiction with a textual adjustment.

This alteration was not an isolated case. The Fourth Commandment had already been quietly amended: originally "No animal shall sleep in a bed," it now read "No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets," a change that Clover first noticed only when Squealer happened to pass by with his escort of dogs and explained that a bed merely meant a place to sleep—a pile of straw in a stall counted as well—and that the rule was against sheets, a human invention. The Fifth Commandment also underwent a similar modification. The animals had believed it said "No animal shall drink alcohol," but Muriel later discovered that it actually read "No animal shall drink alcohol to excess." In each case, the addition of a qualifying phrase—"without cause," "with sheets," "to excess"—served to accommodate the pigs' new behavior while preserving the illusion that the original law had not been violated.

The mechanism behind these changes relied heavily on the pigs' control of narrative and the threat of violence. Squealer, the brilliant talker, was sent around the farm to explain each new arrangement, often appealing to the animals' fear of Jones's return. The dogs, trained to enforce Napoleon's will, growled menacingly at any sign of dissent. The sheep, meanwhile, were trained to bleat "Four legs good, two legs bad" at crucial moments, drowning out any potential opposition. Over time, the animals' memories became unreliable; they could not be certain whether a resolution against trade or against sleeping in beds had ever been passed. The pigs, who had taught themselves to read and write, were the only ones who could consult the written commandments, and they controlled the paint and the ladder. Eventually, the entire wall of commandments was reduced to a single phrase: "ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS." This final revision made explicit what the earlier modifications had only implied: the law was whatever the ruling pigs said it was.

The transformation of the Sixth Commandment encapsulates the broader trajectory of Animal Farm. What began as a revolutionary code meant to secure equality and justice became a tool of oppression, its language twisted to sanction the very crimes it had originally forbidden. The pigs, having seized control of the means of writing and interpretation, gradually erased the memory of the original ideals. In the end, they walked on their hind legs, carried whips, wore human clothes, and entertained human farmers. The animals outside the farmhouse window could no longer distinguish pig from man. The modification of the Sixth Commandment was not a mere clerical error but a deliberate act of power, demonstrating how any legal system, when placed in the hands of an unaccountable elite, can be rewritten to serve its own interests.