the quarry

The quarry, a limestone deposit on the farm, was the sole source of stone for the windmill. The animals had sand and cement at hand, but could not use picks or crowbars because no animal could stand on his hind legs for long. After weeks of vain effort, they hit on the idea of using gravity: they lashed ropes around the huge boulders that littered the quarry bed, and then, with cows, horses, sheep, and even the pigs joining in at critical moments, they dragged the boulders up the slope to the top of the quarry and toppled them over the edge, shattering them below. Transporting the broken stone was less difficult: the horses carried it in cart-loads, sheep dragged single blocks, and Muriel and Benjamin yoked themselves into an old governess-cart. By late summer enough stone had accumulated for the building of the windmill to begin.

The rebuilding of the windmill after its destruction required even more stone, and the quarry became a place of unrelenting toil. For a long time the quarry was filled with snowdrifts, halting all work; when the dry frosty weather came, the animals worked in bitter cold, always hungry, but only Boxer and Clover never lost heart. Boxer, who had adopted the motto "I will work harder," drove himself beyond all reasonable limits. On the slope leading to the top of the quarry, when he braced his muscles against the weight of a vast boulder, it seemed that nothing kept him on his feet except sheer will. His hide grew less shiny, his great haunches shrank, but he never faltered. Even after the executions of the traitors, Boxer went straight to the quarry, collected two successive loads of stone, and dragged them down to the windmill before retiring for the night.

The quarry, where the animals laboured so intensely, epitomized the farm's deeper contradiction: the animals worked longer hours and fed no better than they had in Mr. Jones's day, and the farm grew richer without making the animals themselves any richer, except for the pigs and dogs. The stone that the animals tore from the quarry built the windmill, but the windmill never generated the promised electrical power; it was used only for milling corn, bringing a money profit that went to the pigs. The quarry, like the windmill, became a monument to labour extracted and promises broken.