Animal Farm Chapters 9-10
Boxer had a split hoof but he refused to let the injury affect his work, and he continued to be the hardest worker on the farm. The next winter was just as cold and hard as the previous one. The animals had their rations ‘readjusted’ once again, but the pigs and the dogs never had any of their food allocations reduced. Squealer gave them long figures during their meeting that informed the animals that the farm was producing a lot more than it had during the time of Mr. Jones, yet none of the animals were ever quite satisfied with their food. The number of pigs also began to increase as several sows gave birth to piglets simultaneously and all of them had been fathered by Napoleon who was the only boar on the farm. Napoleon ordered the construction of a school building for the benefit of the piglets, who were prohibited from interacting with the other young animals of the farm.
Boxer was determined to cart as much stone as possible before his retirement which was supposed to occur after his twelfth birthday. The age of retirement for animals had been set during the early days of the rebellion and generous pensions had been allocated for the benefit of the superannuated animals. Boxer continued to work to exhaustion every day until he collapsed on the field, and all the animals rushed out to see the workhorse whose impressive physique had slowly eroded with hard labor and poor nutrition. The animals were told that Boxer would be sent to the hospital for treatment, but Benjamin raised a furor when Boxer was being taken away. He called all the animals away from their work to show them that the cart taking Boxer away was marked with the title of horse slaughterer. The panicked animals tried to encourage Boxer to break out of the cart but the tired old horse was unable to do so. The animals were later told that Boxer had passed away in the hospital, which was where he was being taken, and explained away the words on the hospital cart as having been written by the previous owner of the cart.
Several years passed and the number of animals grew on the farm. A very few animals remained alive from the time of the rebellion which was now a distant memory. None of the animals had ever been retired, and though one windmill had been created, work had already begun for the construction of another. The luxuries that had been promised to the animals for the completion of the windmill were now a distant memory since the first mill was now used as a corn mill rather than for generating electricity. The farm had become more prosperous, as the pigs had procured additional fields from the neighboring farm, and introduced new farming machinery. Despite this progress, the conditions for the animals remained poor, and Benjamin claimed that hunger, labor, and despair were the only truths of life. Moses, Mr. Jones’s old raven, had returned to the farm and she often talked to the animals about heaven in the sky for farm animals where they would receive food and relaxing pastures. Some of the animals were confused about why the pigs allowed the raven to remain, and why they supplied her with a ration of beer which was generally reserved for the pigs. The now fat Squealer defended the hefty rations of the pigs by claiming that their extremely strenuous work of maintaining files and memoranda required a lot of energy.
The conditions of the farm were terrible yet all of the animals, even the new ones, expressed their delight at living on a farm that was run by animals, the only such farm in England. The animals felt a certain pride when they participated in one of Napoleon’s parades and looked at the waving flag of their republic. This feeling of pride began to diminish when the animals discovered that the pigs had begun to walk upright on their hind legs, and the maxim of Animal farm had been changed to “Four legs good, two legs better!” Clover took Benjamin to the wall with the commandments and asked him to read them to her. Benjamin told her that all the commandments had been replaced with a single sentence that now read, “All Animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” Napoleon began to don the old clothes of Mr. Jones and most of the pigs now carried whips in their hands.
The pigs invited the neighboring farmers for an inspection, and the animals on the farm were not sure who they feared more, whether it was the humans or the pigs that ran their farms. The pigs and farmers retreated to the farm building which became a source of raucous noise to the animals in the barn. They all tiptoed to the building and quietly watched as the pigs and men behaved as equals. One of the farmers stood up to toast the progress of Animal Farm whose animals worked harder than any other animals in England and yet received less food. The farmer expressed his delight at the discipline the pigs had maintained among the lower animals and joked that humans also had to similarly contend with the lower classes. Napoleon then stood to make another toast, he announced that he would be changing the name of the farm back to Manor Farm and that the flag would no longer have a horn and a hoof but only be a flag with a green field. The animals noticed that they had never quite noticed how similar the pigs and men looked, and were unsure of when that transformation had begun to take place.
Analysis
The novella is narrated from a collective viewpoint of the animals in a style that is sometimes called the 'village voice'. This narration style allows the reader to view the collective animal body as the protagonist that struggles to come to terms with the corrupted body of government that rules over them. This method of treating the animals as a whole also prevents the reader from knowing about the inner dissenting thoughts that any animal might have, however, the voice of the novella does sometimes shift to Clover's viewpoint. Orwell's use of straightforward language also serves as a clear contrast to the convoluted language used by characters like Squealer and Snowball. In this way, the author hopes to demonstrate that complicated facts can be presented in easy to understand language, and those that seek to overcomplicate their language do so to manipulate the audience.
It would be easy to conclude that the pigs serve as the main antagonist of the novella, however, the true antagonist of Animal Farm is the corruption that accompanies power. The pigs, like the human farmers before, immerse themselves in luxury and comfort by exploiting the farm animals despite once being exposed to the same fate.
