Pigs-other animals inequality

From the earliest days of the Rebellion, the pigs' relationship with the other animals was marked by a contradiction between the revolutionary ideal of equality and the practical establishment of privilege. Old Major's final commandment had declared that all animals are equal, and the pigs' own initial efforts—teaching themselves to read and write, reducing Animalism to the Seven Commandments, and destroying the whips, bits, and ribbons that had symbolized human domination—seemed to affirm that principle. Yet within weeks of the Rebellion, the pigs began to reserve for themselves the milk and the windfall apples, justifying this through Squealer's argument that these foods contained substances necessary for brainworkers. The other animals, though they murmured, accepted the explanation when Squealer invoked the fear of Mr. Jones's return; the milk was mixed into the pigs' mash, and the apples were collected for the harness-room.

The inequality deepened as the pigs consolidated political control. After the expulsion of Snowball, Sunday-morning Meetings were abolished; the pigs alone would decide policy, with the nine dogs—raised in secret by Napoleon—enforcing obedience. When four young porkers voiced dissent, the dogs' growls silenced them, and the sheep's prolonged bleating of "Four legs good, two legs bad" ended all discussion. The weekly assembly itself became a ritual of submission: the animals filed reverently past the skull of Old Major, and Napoleon, Squealer, and Minimus sat on a raised platform surrounded by the dogs, while the others sat below. In the second year, rations were reduced for all animals except the pigs and the dogs—a "readjustment," Squealer insisted, that was necessary because too rigid equality would be contrary to Animalism. The pigs' material privileges multiplied: they received a pint of beer daily, with half a gallon for Napoleon; their young were educated by Napoleon himself in the farmhouse kitchen, separated from the other young animals; and it was decreed that any pig had the right of way on paths and the privilege of wearing green ribbons on Sundays. Meanwhile the other animals—the horses, sheep, hens, cows, and goats—continued to sleep on straw, drink from the pool, labour in the fields, and suffer from cold and hunger. The farm grew richer, Squealer's figures showed, but the animals themselves grew no richer; the pigs and dogs consumed without producing food, while the others worked ever longer hours for ever less return.

Years later, the pigs' transformation was complete. Squealer, walking on his hind legs, crossed the yard; then all the pigs followed, some unsteadily, and finally Napoleon, upright and carrying a whip. The animals who had once flung the whips and the ribbons of Mr. Jones into the rubbish fire now saw their own leaders adopt those very instruments of domination. In the farmhouse, the pigs entertained the neighbouring farmers, and when the animals peered through the window, they saw that the faces of the pigs and the men had become impossible to tell apart. The original commandment—all animals are equal—had been hollowed out by a system of privilege that made the pigs a new ruling class, indistinguishable in their behaviour and their appearance from the human beings they had overthrown.