No animal shall wear clothes

The Third Commandment, "No animal shall wear clothes," was among the original Seven Commandments inscribed on the tarred wall of the Big Barn by Snowball shortly after the expulsion of Mr. Jones. It derived directly from Old Major's teaching that animals must not adopt human vices, and it was accepted by all the animals as a fundamental law of Animal Farm. The commandment was a concrete expression of the principle that clothing was a badge of human tyranny and that animals, having thrown off human rule, should remain in their natural state.

Origin and Early Enforcement

The commandment was first articulated by Old Major in his speech to the assembled animals, when he declared that no animal must ever live in a house, sleep in a bed, wear clothes, drink alcohol, or engage in trade. Snowball later gave the rule a practical application during the destruction of Jones's possessions. When he threw the ribbons used to decorate the horses' manes and tails onto the rubbish fire, he explained, "Ribbons should be considered as clothes, which are the mark of a human being. All animals should go naked." Boxer, hearing this, fetched his small straw hat—worn in summer to keep flies out of his ears—and flung it onto the fire as well. The commandment was thus understood to forbid not only human garments but any ornament or covering that signified human custom.

Erosion and Violation

Over time, the pigs began to violate the spirit and eventually the letter of the Third Commandment. The first significant breach occurred when the pigs moved into the farmhouse and began sleeping in the beds, though Squealer argued that the rule against beds applied only to sheets, which were a human invention. The pigs also took to wearing green ribbons on their tails on Sundays, a privilege formally granted to all pigs of whatever degree. This was a direct violation of the principle that ribbons were clothes and therefore forbidden, but no animal protested. The most flagrant violation came in the final chapter, when Napoleon appeared in the farmhouse garden with a pipe in his mouth, and the pigs took Mr. Jones's clothes out of the wardrobes and put them on. Napoleon himself wore a black coat, ratcatcher breeches, and leather leggings, while his favorite sow appeared in the watered silk dress that Mrs. Jones had worn on Sundays. The pigs also carried whips in their trotters while supervising work, another human accoutrement.

Thematic Significance

The Third Commandment's trajectory—from a clear prohibition to a dead letter—illustrates the pigs' complete assimilation of human habits and their abandonment of Animalist principles. The commandment was meant to preserve the animals' distinct identity and prevent them from becoming like the humans they had overthrown. Its violation marked the final stage of the pigs' transformation into the very oppressors they had rebelled against. By the end of the novel, the pigs not only wore clothes but also walked on their hind legs, drank alcohol, slept in beds, engaged in trade, and killed other animals. The commandment's fate is part of the broader pattern in which the Seven Commandments were gradually altered to justify the pigs' privileges, culminating in the single overriding principle: "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." The Third Commandment, like the others, was effectively erased, and the pigs' adoption of human dress became the outward sign of their complete moral and political corruption.