Pigs Walk on Hind Legs

The event occurred on an evening in early summer, after the sheep had returned from a week of training under Squealer. The animals had finished their work and were making their way back to the farm buildings when they heard the terrified neighing of Clover from the yard. Racing to the yard, they saw a pig walking on his hind legs. It was Squealer, moving with awkward but perfect balance, strolling across the yard. Then a long file of pigs emerged from the farmhouse, all walking upright, some unsteady as if desiring a stick. Finally, Napoleon himself appeared, majestically upright, casting haughty glances, with his dogs gambolling around him. He carried a whip in his trotter. The animals watched in dead silence, amazed and terrified, huddling together as the world seemed turned upside down.

For a moment, the animals might have protested, but the sheep burst into a tremendous bleating of 'Four legs good, two legs better!' which continued for five minutes, drowning out any dissent. By the time the sheep quieted, the pigs had marched back into the farmhouse, and the chance for protest had passed.

This spectacle was the culmination of the pigs' gradual adoption of human habits. In the early days of the Rebellion, the animals had destroyed the whips and burned the ribbons and harnesses, determined to reject every human practice. Now, the pigs not only carried whips but also wore Mr. Jones's clothes—Napoleon in a black coat and ratcatcher breeches, his favourite sow in Mrs. Jones's watered silk dress. The original maxim 'Four legs good, two legs bad,' which had been used to simplify Animalism and distinguish animals from humans, was perverted into 'Four legs good, two legs better,' a direct contradiction of the founding principles. Old Major had warned against resembling Man, but the pigs had now fully adopted the vices of their former oppressors.

The pigs' upright posture and the whip became symbols of their complete transformation into tyrants. They were no longer distinguishable from humans, as later observed when the pigs and the neighbouring farmers played cards together, their faces melting into one another. The event marked the final betrayal of the Rebellion's ideals: the pigs had become exactly what they had rebelled against.