Chapter 5
When winter comes, Clover, another horse, discovers that Mollie is being bribed by Pilkington, enough so to cause her to leave Animal Farm, whereafter she is seen by pigeons to be standing outside a pub. After this, the pigs tighten their regime and solidify their power further, deciding all policies before putting them up for voting. A windmill is debated in one of Napoleon and Snowball’s discussions, with Snowball in support of the idea, feeling it will, in the end, save energy and demand for work.
Napoleon disagrees, however, feeling it’ll take time away from producing food, which is what he thinks to be the most important task. The two then debate between building up an armoury, which Napoleon feels is needed, or to keep spreading word to other farms, which Snowball feels is needed.
Come the day of voting, Snowball is pursued off the farm by nine dogs employed by Napoleon, after which he installs his regime of complete tyranny.
Some weeks after Napoleon’s takeover, he decides to inform the animals that they will, indeed, build a windmill and that, via Squealer’s relay, it was Napoleon’s idea all along.
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Orwell wrote the novel at the end of 1943, but it almost remained unpublished; its savage attack on Stalin, at that time Britain’s ally, led to the book being refused by publisher after publisher.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