Animal Farm windmill

The Animal Farm windmill is the central physical project and ideological symbol of the farm's post-revolutionary ambition, representing both the promise of technological liberation and the progressive corruption of the pigs' leadership. Its construction, destruction, and repurposing trace the arc from collective hope to exploitative reality.

Origin and Design

The windmill was first proposed by Snowball, who declared that the small knoll near the farm buildings was the ideal location for a windmill that could operate a dynamo and supply the farm with electrical power. This would light and warm the stalls in winter, and run a circular saw, a chaff-cutter, a mangel-slicer, and an electric milking machine. The animals, who had never heard of such things, listened in astonishment as Snowball conjured pictures of fantastic machines that would do their work while they grazed at ease or improved their minds. Snowball worked out the mechanical details 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 spent hours in the incubator shed, drawing with chalk on the smooth wooden floor, producing a complicated mass of cranks and cog-wheels that covered more than half the floor. All the animals came to look at the 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, declaring himself against the windmill from the start. One day he arrived unexpectedly, examined the plans closely, then suddenly lifted his leg, urinated over them, and walked out without a word.

The Struggle to Build

Despite Napoleon's initial opposition, after Snowball's expulsion he announced that the windmill was to be built after all, claiming that the plans had actually been stolen from among his own papers. The building presented unexpected difficulties. The animals could not use picks and crowbars because no animal could stand on his hind legs, so they had to utilize the force of gravity: they lashed ropes around huge boulders, dragged them with desperate slowness up the slope to the top of the quarry, and toppled them over the edge to shatter below. Transporting the broken stone was comparatively simple, with horses carrying cart-loads, sheep dragging single blocks, and even Muriel and Benjamin yoking themselves into an old governess-cart. Boxer's strength seemed equal to that of all the rest of the animals put together; when a boulder began to slip and the animals cried out in despair, it was always Boxer who strained himself against the rope and brought it to a stop. The animals worked a sixty-hour week throughout spring and summer, and in August Napoleon announced that there would be work on Sunday afternoons as well, strictly voluntary but with rations halved for any who absented themselves. The windmill was almost half built by autumn, but in November a violent gale destroyed it, leveling it to its foundations. Napoleon immediately blamed Snowball, pronouncing the death sentence upon him and offering a reward of half a bushel of apples for his capture. The animals began rebuilding at once, this time with walls three feet thick instead of eighteen inches.

Destruction and Rebuilding

The second windmill was completed after a tremendous, exhausting effort, with walls twice as thick as before. Napoleon himself came down to inspect the completed work and announced that the mill would be named Napoleon Mill. Two days later, however, Frederick and his men attacked the farm. They drilled a hole near the base of the windmill, packed it with blasting powder, and blew it up. The explosion flung the stones to distances of hundreds of yards; it was as though the windmill had never been. The animals, enraged, charged the men and drove them off, but the windmill was gone. Boxer, though wounded, immediately braced himself for the task of rebuilding from the foundations, but for the first time it occurred to him that he was eleven years old and that his great muscles were not what they had once been.

Final Form and Significance

Years passed, and the windmill was successfully completed at last. However, it was not used for generating electrical power as Snowball had dreamed. Instead, it was used for milling corn and brought in a handsome money profit. The animals were hard at work building yet another windmill; when that one was finished, so it was said, the dynamos would be installed. But the luxuries of which Snowball had once taught the animals to dream—the stalls with electric light and hot and cold water, and the three-day week—were no longer talked about. Napoleon had denounced such ideas as contrary to the spirit of Animalism. The truest happiness, he said, lay in working hard and living frugally. The windmill, which had begun as a symbol of liberation from labor, had become a source of profit for the pigs, while the other animals remained generally hungry, sleeping on straw, drinking from the pool, and laboring in the fields. The windmill's trajectory—from visionary plan to collective struggle, from destruction to repurposing—mirrors the farm's own transformation from a hopeful rebellion into a system of exploitation, where the promise of equality gave way to the reality that all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.