Chapter 2
Old Major passes away but his ideals and his philosophies live on. The animals plot and scheme their rebellion and the pigs, because of their intelligence, are placed in charge. Napoleon and Snowball are the prominent pigs in this ensemble and they call their new philosophy ‘Animalism’. Mollie, a horse, is however preoccupied with the stories of Moses, a raven. He speaks of a place called Sugarcandy Mountain.
Mr. Jones falls into another drunken state and lands himself asleep. His neglect of the animals causes them to break into the store shelter in order to find food. Jones and a few of his men arrive, hearing the commotion, and they begin to whip the animals for their behaviour.
Their punishment is unsuccessful, however, when the combined effort of the animals manages to drive Jones and his men off the farm. They then begin to make drastic changes to the steadings, destroying Jone’s marks on the place, changing the name ‘Manor Farm’ to ‘Animal Farm’, and creating a list of seven commandments for their new Animalistic ideology.
Napoleon then steals the buckets of the milk which the cows give. Jone’s home, however, is left relatively intact in order to act as a ‘museum’ of sorts.
George Orwell’s chilling fable of Soviet Russia’s brutal dictatorship, Animal Farm brings to life in lucid, uncomplicated language the disastrous project of Russian Communism. This Penguin Modern classics edition includes an introduction by Malcolm Bradbury. ‘All animals are equal – but some are more equal than others’ When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master Mr Jones and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality.
But gradually a cunning, ruthless élite among them, masterminded by the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, starts to take control. Soon the other animals discover that they are not all as equal as they thought, and find themselves hopelessly ensnared as one form of tyranny is replaced with another. ‘It is the history of a revolution that went wrong – and of the excellent excuses that were forthcoming at every step for the perversion of the original doctrine,’ wrote Orwell for the first edition of Animal Farm in 1945.
Orwell wrote the novel at the end of 1943, but it almost remained unpublished; its savage attack on Stalin, at that time Britain’s ally, led to the book being refused by publisher after publisher. Orwell’s simple, tragic fable has since become a world-famous classic. If you enjoyed Animal Farm, you might like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. ‘It is the book for everyone and Everyman, its brightness undimmed after fifty years’ Ruth Rendell, Daily Telegraph Books of the Century