the sheep

The sheep are introduced as part of the audience at Old Major's speech, lying down behind the pigs and beginning to chew the cud. They are among the "stupider animals" who cannot learn the Seven Commandments by heart, prompting Snowball to reduce Animalism to a single maxim: "Four legs good, two legs bad." The sheep develop a great liking for this chant and often bleat it for hours on end, never growing tired of it.

The sheep's chanting quickly becomes a political instrument. After Snowball's expulsion, when four young pigs attempt to protest the abolition of Sunday meetings, the sheep break out into a tremendous bleating of "Four legs good, two legs bad!" that continues for nearly a quarter of an hour, effectively ending any discussion. When the animals are uneasy about the decision to engage in trade with humans, the sheep again interrupt with their chant, smoothing over the momentary awkwardness. The sheep are thus used to silence dissent and enforce consensus without need for overt force.

The climax of the sheep's role comes when the pigs begin walking on their hind legs. As Napoleon and the other pigs parade across the yard, the sheep burst out with a new chant: "Four legs good, two legs better!" This altered slogan retroactively justifies the pigs' transformation and prevents any protest from the other animals. Later, in the final scene, the voices of pigs and humans become indistinguishable, and the sheep's earlier chant has normalized the pigs' human-like behavior. The sheep, as a collective, have no individual identity or memory; they are a manipulable mass that can be programmed to repeat any slogan. Their evolution from passive followers to active enforcers of the pigs' tyranny mirrors the corruption of the revolution itself.