Manor Farm: the old boar Old Major tells the animals about his dream of a world without humans. He dies, and the pigs Napoleon, Snowball and Squealer lead a rebellion, driving out the drunken farmer Mr Jones. The farm is renamed Animal Farm and the Seven Commandments are painted on the barn, ending with "All animals are equal".
Snowball proposes a windmill promising electricity and less work. Napoleon raises the puppies, uses the dogs to expel Snowball, ends open meetings and adopts the project while denying Snowball credit.
Privileges grow through changed rules, manipulated records and violence, including executions. The windmill is destroyed and rebuilt. Benjamin warns the animals when Boxer is taken away, but the warning comes too late; Squealer supplies a reassuring alternative account.
The completed windmill eventually mills grain for profit rather than supplying the promised electricity. The pigs walk upright and the earlier commandments give way to a contradictory claim of superior equality. Napoleon announces a return to the name Manor Farm.
At the end, the pigs are indistinguishable from humans.
An ideal proposed to the listeners
Characters
Napoleon consolidates coercive power; Snowball is energetic and intelligent but also shares early pig privileges. Squealer manipulates accounts and justification. Old Major proposes emancipation. Boxer’s trust and labour are exploited. Benjamin is often inactive but tries to save Boxer; Clover and Muriel also notice troubling changes. Mollie’s departure and Moses’s changing reception complicate the farm’s responses.
Power changes the original promise
Context
Written in 1943–44 and first published in August 1945. Orwell’s democratic socialism and opposition to Stalinism help explain the satire. The Russian Revolution and later Soviet history provide important correspondences, but characters can combine roles and the fictional chronology does not reproduce history exactly.
A promise and a different outcome
幻灯片
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