Rebellion

The Rebellion of the animals on Manor Farm was not a carefully plotted revolution but a sudden, desperate explosion born of hunger and accumulated cruelty. On Midsummer Eve, Mr. Jones had gone to the Red Lion in Willingdon and returned drunk, neglecting to feed the animals. The cows broke into the store-shed; when Jones and his four men arrived with whips, the animals, without any previous plan, turned on them. The human beings, terrified by the unprecedented uprising, fled down the cart-track, and Mrs. Jones slipped away with a carpet bag, followed by the raven Moses. The animals slammed the five-barred gate and, almost before they knew it, the Rebellion was complete: Jones was expelled, and the farm was theirs.

In the first flush of victory, the animals raced around the boundaries to confirm no human remained, then set about erasing every trace of Jones's reign. The harness-room was broken open; bits, nose-rings, dog-chains, and the cruel knives used for castration were flung down the well. Reins, halters, blinkers, nosebags, and whips were thrown onto a rubbish fire. Snowball declared that ribbons, like clothes, were the mark of human beings and cast them into the flames, and Boxer followed by tossing his straw hat onto the fire. Napoleon then served out a double ration of corn with two biscuits for each dog, and the animals sang "Beasts of England" seven times before sleeping as they had never slept before.

Old Major, the boar whose speech had first stirred the idea of Rebellion, had laid down the principles: "Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy," "No animal must ever tyrannise over his own kind," and "All animals are equal." These were later inscribed on the barn wall as the Seven Commandments, and Snowball reduced them to the simple maxim "Four legs good, two legs bad." Sunday meetings were instituted, with the green flag—symbolizing the future Republic of the Animals—hoisted weekly. The pigs, recognized as the cleverest, assumed the direction of farm policy, though decisions were meant to be ratified by majority vote.

Yet the Rebellion's promise of equality began to fray almost immediately. The pigs reserved the milk and apples for themselves, arguing that brainworkers needed them. The Sunday meetings were abolished after Napoleon, using nine dogs he had secretly raised, expelled Snowball. The Commandments were quietly altered: "No animal shall sleep in a bed" became "No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets"; "No animal shall drink alcohol" became "No animal shall drink alcohol to excess"; and "No animal shall kill any other animal" gained the qualifier "without cause." The pigs moved into the farmhouse, slept in beds, and began to trade with humans. Napoleon adopted titles such as "Father of All Animals" and "Terror of Mankind," and the sheep were trained to bleat "Four legs good, two legs better" to drown out dissent.

By the final years, the Rebellion had been entirely inverted. The pigs walked on their hind legs, carried whips, and wore human clothes. Napoleon himself appeared in a black coat and ratcatcher breeches, smoking a pipe. The farm was renamed back to Manor Farm, the green flag was made plain, the skull of Old Major was buried, and the word "Comrade" was suppressed. When neighbouring farmers visited, they found the animals working harder and receiving less food than any in the county, and the pigs and humans sat down together to drink a toast. Looking through the window, the other animals saw twelve voices shouting in anger—and they could no longer tell which was pig and which was man.