Snowball-windmill creation

Snowball, the more inventive of the two young boars who took up Old Major's teachings, was the first to conceive of building a windmill on Animal Farm. Surveying the land, he identified a small knoll in the long pasture as the ideal site. He declared that the windmill could operate a dynamo to supply the farm with electrical power, lighting and warming the stalls in winter, and running a circular saw, a chaff-cutter, a mangel-slicer, and an electric milking machine. The animals, accustomed to the farm's primitive machinery, listened in astonishment as Snowball conjured up pictures of fantastic machines that would do their work for them while they grazed at their ease in the fields or improved their minds with reading and conversation. This was the first time such a vision had been articulated on the farm, and it captured the animals' imagination.

Within weeks, Snowball fully worked out the mechanical details of the windmill. The plans came mostly from three books that had belonged to Mr. Jones—One Thousand Useful Things to Do About the House, Every Man His Own Bricklayer, and Electricity for Beginners. He used as his study a shed that had once been used for incubators, with a smooth wooden floor suitable for drawing on. Closeted there for hours, with his books held open by a stone and a piece of chalk gripped between the knuckles of his trotter, he moved rapidly to and fro, drawing line after line and uttering little whimpers of excitement. Gradually the plans grew into a complicated mass of cranks and cog-wheels covering more than half the floor, completely unintelligible to the other animals but deeply impressive. All of them came to look at Snowball's drawings at least once a day, even the hens and ducks, who were at pains not to tread on the chalk marks. Only Napoleon held aloof; he had declared himself against the windmill from the start. One day he arrived unexpectedly to examine the plans, walked heavily round the shed, looked closely at every detail, snuffed at them once or twice, then stood contemplating them out of the corner of his eye—and suddenly lifted his leg, urinated over the plans, and walked out without uttering a word.

The windmill became the central issue in the growing rivalry between Snowball and Napoleon. At the Sunday Meetings, Snowball often won over the majority by his brilliant speeches, while Napoleon was better at canvassing support in between times, especially among the sheep, who had taken to bleating "Four legs good, two legs bad" at crucial moments to interrupt Snowball. The whole farm was deeply divided. When the day came for the final vote, Snowball's eloquence carried the animals away, and it seemed certain that the windmill would be approved. But just at that moment Napoleon stood up, uttered a peculiar high-pitched whimper, and nine enormous dogs wearing brass-studded collars burst into the barn and dashed straight for Snowball. Snowball barely escaped their jaws, raced across the long pasture, and slipped through a hole in the hedge, never to be seen on the farm again. The dogs, it turned out, were the puppies Napoleon had raised in secret.

On the third Sunday after Snowball's expulsion, the animals were surprised to hear Napoleon announce that the windmill was to be built after all. He gave no reason for having changed his mind, merely warning that the extra task would mean very hard work and might even require reduced rations. The plans, he said, had been prepared by a special committee of pigs over the past three weeks, and the building was expected to take two years. That evening, Squealer explained privately that Napoleon had never really been opposed to the windmill; on the contrary, it was he who had advocated it from the beginning, and Snowball's drawings had actually been stolen from among Napoleon's papers. The opposition had been a tactical manoeuvre, called "tactics," to get rid of Snowball, who was a dangerous character. The animals, uncertain of the word's meaning but persuaded by Squealer's eloquence and the threatening growls of the dogs, accepted the explanation.

The windmill, once completed after immense labor, ultimately became a symbol of the regime's betrayal of Snowball's original vision. It was never used to generate electrical power as Snowball had dreamed; instead, it was used for milling corn, bringing in a handsome money profit. The animals were hard at work building yet another windmill, but the luxuries of electric light, hot and cold water, and the three-day week were no longer talked about—Napoleon denounced such ideas as contrary to the spirit of Animalism. The farm grew richer, but the animals themselves grew no richer, except for the pigs and the dogs. The windmill, Snowball's creation, had been appropriated by the very forces that expelled him, and served to enrich the ruling pigs rather than free the animals. When neighboring farmers came to inspect the farm, they expressed great admiration for the windmill, praising the discipline and orderliness they saw—a far cry from the utopian republic Snowball had once envisioned.