Mr. Jones-Animal Farm ownership

Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, was the farm's original human owner, a man whose habitual drunkenness and neglect made the animals' lives, as Old Major described them, 'miserable, laborious, and short.' On the night of Major's speech, Jones had locked the hen-houses but was too drunk to shut the popholes; he lurched across the yard with a dancing lantern, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew a last glass of beer from the scullery barrel, and went to bed while Mrs. Jones snored. The rebellion erupted on Midsummer's Eve after Jones spent the day at the Red Lion in Willingdon, returning drunk and falling asleep on the sofa, leaving the animals unfed. When they broke into the store-shed, he and his men attacked with whips, but the animals turned on them and drove them off the farm. Some animals had initially been loyal to Jones, calling him 'Master' and fearing starvation without him, but the pigs' teachings of Animalism had prepared the ground for the uprising.

The expulsion was immediate: Mrs. Jones fled with a carpet bag, Moses the raven flapped after her, and the animals chased Jones and his men down the cart-track and slammed the five-barred gate behind them. The Manor Farm was theirs. In a frenzy of liberation, the animals galloped the boundaries, then smashed open the harness-room and threw the bits, nose-rings, dog-chains, castrating knives, reins, halters, blinkers, nosebags, and whips onto a rubbish fire, capering with joy as the whips went up in flames. Snowball flung the market-day ribbons onto the fire, declaring that ribbons were clothes, the mark of a human being. Soon after, the pigs revealed they had taught themselves to read and write from an old spelling book, and Snowball painted out 'Manor Farm' on the five-barred gate and painted 'Animal Farm' in its place. The Seven Commandments, including the prohibitions against living in a house, sleeping in a bed, wearing clothes, drinking alcohol, and engaging in trade, were inscribed in great white letters on the barn wall as the unalterable law of the new farm.

But the unalterable law proved mutable. Over the years, the pigs moved into the farmhouse, slept in beds, and began to drink beer—each pig receiving a daily pint, and Napoleon half a gallon served in the Crown Derby soup tureen. Napoleon was seen strolling in the farmhouse garden with a pipe in his mouth, and the pigs had installed a wireless set and telephone. The farm's name was changed back to 'The Manor Farm' by Napoleon's decree, the green flag lost its hoof and horn, and the pigs adopted human clothes: Napoleon appeared in a black coat, ratcatcher breeches, and leather leggings, while his favourite sow wore Mrs. Jones's watered silk dress. The final collapse of the boundary came when the pigs began to walk on their hind legs, Squealer leading them across the yard, and Napoleon himself emerged upright, carrying a whip, with his dogs gambolling around him. At a dinner with neighbouring farmers, the animals peering through the window heard twelve voices shouting in anger, and they could no longer distinguish pig from man. The farm had returned to its original name and its original condition: the owner was now a pig who had become, in all visible respects, a human being. The animals worked longer hours for less food than they had under Jones, and the farm's prosperity enriched only the pigs and the dogs. The ownership of the farm had passed from a drunken human to a tyrannical pig, but the structure of exploitation remained unchanged.