Mr. Jones
Mr. Jones, the original human proprietor of Manor Farm, is the catalyst for the animal rebellion and the enduring negative reference point against which the pigs measure their own rule. A hard master who has fallen on evil days, he embodies the tyranny that Old Major denounces, yet his eventual disappearance from the narrative—dying alone in an inebriates' home—underscores how the pigs' regime ultimately replicates and even surpasses his failures while erasing his memory.
Identity and Background
Mr. Jones is introduced as a neglectful and drunken farmer. On the night of Old Major's speech, he locks the henhouses but is too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes, lurches across the yard, kicks off his boots, draws a last glass of beer, and makes his way up to bed where Mrs. Jones is already snoring. In past years he had been a capable farmer, but he has become disheartened after losing money in a lawsuit and has taken to drinking more than is good for him. For whole days at a time he lounges in his Windsor chair in the kitchen, reading newspapers, drinking, and occasionally feeding Moses on crusts of bread soaked in beer. His men are idle and dishonest, the fields are full of weeds, the buildings want roofing, the hedges are neglected, and the animals are underfed.
The Rebellion and Expulsion
The Rebellion is triggered directly by Mr. Jones's neglect. On Midsummer's Eve, a Saturday, he goes into Willingdon and gets so drunk at the Red Lion that he does not return until midday on Sunday. The men milk the cows in the early morning and then go out rabbiting without feeding the animals. When Mr. Jones gets back he immediately goes to sleep on the drawing-room sofa with the News of the World over his face, so that when evening comes the animals are still unfed. At last they can stand it no longer: one of the cows breaks in the door of the store-shed with her horn and all the animals begin to help themselves from the bins. Mr. Jones wakes up, and the next moment he and his four men are in the store-shed with whips in their hands, lashing out in all directions. The hungry animals fling themselves upon their tormentors, and Jones and his men, frightened by this sudden uprising, give up trying to defend themselves and take to their heels. Mrs. Jones looks out of the bedroom window, sees what is happening, hurriedly flings a few possessions into a carpet bag, and slips out of the farm by another way. Moses springs off his perch and flaps after her, croaking loudly. The animals chase Jones and his men out onto the road and slam the five-barred gate behind them. The Rebellion is successfully carried through: Jones is expelled, and the Manor Farm is theirs.
Aftermath and Attempted Recapture
After his expulsion, Mr. Jones spends most of his time sitting in the taproom of the Red Lion at Willingdon, complaining to anyone who will listen of the monstrous injustice he has suffered in being turned out of his property by a pack of good-for-nothing animals. The other farmers sympathise in principle but do not at first give him much help. Early in October, Jones and all his men, with half a dozen others from Foxwood and Pinchfield, enter the five-barred gate and attempt to recapture the farm. Jones marches ahead with a gun in his hands. During the Battle of the Cowshed, Snowball dashes straight for Jones; Jones sees him coming, raises his gun, and fires. The pellets score bloody streaks along Snowball's back, and a sheep drops dead. Snowball flings his fifteen stone against Jones's legs, hurling him into a pile of dung; his gun flies out of his hands. The animals win the battle, and Jones's gun is found lying in the mud. It is decided to set the gun up at the foot of the Flagstaff, like a piece of artillery, and to fire it twice a year—once on October the twelfth, the anniversary of the Battle of the Cowshed, and once on Midsummer Day, the anniversary of the Rebellion.
Decline and Death
Mr. Jones eventually gives up hope of getting his farm back and goes to live in another part of the county. By the time years have passed, Jones is dead—he dies in an inebriates' home in another part of the country. His death is noted almost as an afterthought, a minor fact among the many changes that have overtaken the farm. The animals who remember the old days before the Rebellion are reduced to Clover, Benjamin, Moses the raven, and a number of the pigs; Jones, like Snowball and Boxer, is forgotten except by the few who had known him. His fate—dying in an institution for alcoholics—mirrors the drunkenness that precipitated his downfall and completes the erasure of the human master from the farm's history.
Narrative Role and Significance
Mr. Jones functions as the original antagonist and the embodiment of human tyranny that the animals rebel against. His neglect and cruelty provide the immediate cause for the uprising, and his name becomes a rhetorical weapon: the pigs repeatedly invoke the threat of "Jones coming back" to silence dissent and justify their own increasingly oppressive measures. Yet the narrative arc of his character—from drunken master to defeated exile to forgotten corpse in an inebriates' home—also serves a deeper ironic purpose. The pigs, who begin by defining themselves in opposition to everything Jones represents, end by adopting his habits: Napoleon drinks alcohol, sleeps in a bed, wears Jones's clothes, and ultimately walks on two legs carrying a whip. The final scene, in which the pigs entertain the neighbouring farmers and the farm is renamed Manor Farm, completes the circle: the revolution has produced a new ruling class indistinguishable from the old one. Mr. Jones, though physically absent, haunts the narrative as the measure of how far the pigs have betrayed the principles they once proclaimed.
