Pigs move into the farmhouse

The pigs' move into the farmhouse occurred suddenly, not long after Napoleon had initiated trade with the outside world. The animals had previously passed a resolution against living in the house, but now Squealer convinced them that no such resolution had ever existed. The pigs began taking their meals in the kitchen, using the drawing-room as a recreation room, and sleeping in the beds. Boxer, as always, dismissed the matter with "Napoleon is always right!", but Clover was disturbed, recalling a definite prohibition against beds.

Clover went to the end of the barn, where the Seven Commandments were inscribed, and tried to read the Fourth Commandment. Unable to decipher more than individual letters, she fetched Muriel. Muriel read aloud: "No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets." Curiously, Clover had not remembered the mention of sheets, but the words were on the wall, so she assumed they had always been there.

Squealer, happening to pass with two or three dogs, put the matter in perspective. He explained that a bed merely means a place to sleep in—a pile of straw in a stall is a bed. The rule, he said, was against sheets, which are a human invention. The pigs had removed the sheets and slept between blankets. He appealed to the animals' fear of Jones's return and stressed the pigs' need for comfort to carry out their brainwork. The animals, reassured, accepted the arrangement.

This event marked a decisive step in the erosion of the revolution's founding principles. Old Major had explicitly forbidden animals to live in a house or sleep in a bed. By redefining the Fourth Commandment, the pigs had begun to reshape the very language of the law to suit their convenience. In time, the pigs would go further: they would walk on their hind legs, wear clothes, carry whips, and eventually become indistinguishable from the human beings they had overthrown. The move into the farmhouse was the first concrete violation of the rule that animals must not resemble Man, and it set the pattern for all subsequent betrayals.