Napoleon and the Seven Commandments

When the Seven Commandments were first inscribed on the tarred wall of the big barn by Snowball, they were meant to form an unalterable law for all animals on Animal Farm, drawn from the principles Old Major had preached. They forbade living in a house, sleeping in a bed, wearing clothes, drinking alcohol, engaging in trade, killing another animal, and declared all animals equal.

The first alteration appeared after the pigs moved into the farmhouse and began sleeping in the beds. When Clover, remembering a prohibition against beds, asked Muriel to read the Fourth Commandment, Muriel spelt out: "No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets." The qualification "with sheets" had been added, and the animals accepted the new wording.

After the executions of the traitors, some animals recalled that the Sixth Commandment forbade killing any other animal. Muriel read it again: "No animal shall kill any other animal without cause." The words "without cause" had been added, and the animals concluded that the executions had been justified, since the traitors had leagued with Snowball.

Later, after the Whisky Incident, Muriel noticed that the Fifth Commandment had also been altered. What the animals had remembered as "No animal shall drink alcohol" now read: "No animal shall drink alcohol to excess." The addition of "to excess" permitted the pigs to drink, provided they did not overdo it.

By the end of the novel, the Seven Commandments had been replaced by a single maxim. When Clover, her sight failing, asked Benjamin to read what was written on the wall, he read out: "ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS." This final commandment encapsulated the complete inversion of the original revolutionary ideals: inequality had become enshrined as law.

The rewriting of the commandments was part of a broader transformation in which the pigs adopted human habits: they walked on their hind legs, carried whips, wore clothes, and even began to resemble the humans they had overthrown. At the final gathering, the animals outside could no longer distinguish pig from man. The corruption of the law mirrored the corruption of the revolution itself.