LibGuides: Study Guide : Animal Farm: Detailed Summary and Analysis

Animal Farm Video Summary

Summary and Analysis

Key Plot Details

Chapters - Summary

Chapter 1

The owner of Manor Farm, Mr. Jones, locks his henhouses for the evening—but he’s too drunk to remember to shut everything before he goes to bed. As soon as the lights are off in the farmhouse, the animals all stir and make their way to the big barn, where the old boar, Old Major, wants to address everyone...Read more

Chapter 2

Old Major dies three nights later, in early March. Over the next three months, his ideas capture the imaginations of the more intelligent animals on Manor Farm, specifically the pigs...Read more

Chapter 3

Every animal, down to the ducks and the hens, works hard to bring the hay in. The pigs are clever enough to figure out how to do this without tools that involve standing on two legs, while Boxer and Clover know the intricacies of bringing hay in. Because the pigs are so intelligent, they don’t actually work and instead assume leadership positions. It takes the animals less than time than it ever did Mr. Jones to bring in the hay, and the harvest is bigger than it’s ever been. Throughout the summer, things work perfectly. The animals are thrilled to eat food that they produced for themselves and not have to share it with humans...Read more

Chapter 4

By late summer, half of England knows about Animal Farm. Snowball and Napoleon send out pigeons to spread the word to other animals and teach them “Beasts of England,” while Mr. Jones sits in the bar in Willingdon and complains about his fate. The other farmers sympathize but refuse to help—they all want to make his misfortune work for them... Read more

Chapter 5

As winter approaches, Mollie becomes more difficult to deal with. She’s often late for work and complains, but she spends most of her time gazing at her reflection in the drinking pool. One day, Clover takes Mollie aside and quietly asks if she really saw Mollie allowing a man from Foxwood to pet her nose. Mollie denies this accusation, but she can’t look Clover in the eye...Read more

Chapter 6

The animals work like slaves that year, but they’re happy knowing that humans won’t profit from their efforts. They work 60-hour weeks through the summer, and in August, Napoleon announces that they’ll work on Sunday afternoons. This is voluntary, but animals who don’t work Sundays will see reduced rations. The harvest is less successful this year and mishaps mean that the animals missed planting certain crops. The winter is guaranteed to be difficult...Read more

Chapter 7

The winter is bitter and cold, but the animals toil on the windmill knowing that the humans will be thrilled if they don’t finish on time. The humans spitefully pretend that the windmill fell because the walls were too thin, not because of Snowball...Read more

Chapter 8

A few days later, some animals think they remember that the Sixth Commandment said that animals shouldn’t kill other animals. Nobody says anything to the pigs or the dogs, but Clover feels that the executions aren’t in line with this rule. She asks Benjamin to read her the Commandment, but he refuses so, Muriel reads instead...Read more

Chapter 9

Boxer’s split hoof takes a long time to heal. He refuses to take time off from work on the windmill, but in the evenings, he shares with Clover that his hoof is painful. Clover and Benjamin encourage Boxer to be careful, but Boxer insists he wants to see the windmill done before he retires. The age of retirement for horses is 12 on Animal Farm, and though no animal has yet retired, they’ll all receive a generous pension when the time comes. Boxer’s 12th birthday is next summer....Read more

Chapter 10

Years pass, and soon, only Clover, Benjamin, Moses, and some of the pigs remember life before the rebellion. Everyone else dies and even Boxer is forgotten. Clover is now 14, but she’s still not retired. Napoleon and Squealer are both huge and fat. There are many animals on the farm, but not as many as they’d projected to have by this time. Because of this, most of the animals don’t grasp the importance of the rebellion....Read more

Chapters - Analysis

Chapter 1

To begin with, all the animals exist under Mr. Jones’s somewhat totalitarian regime, and therefore are on somewhat equal footing at this point. However, pay attention to the way in which the animals arrange themselves...Read more

Chapter 2

The differences between how the pigs begin to think about the revolution and how the other animals think about the revolution again start to show how class will develop on the farm...Read more

Chapter 3

Though it seems like everything is going smoothly, note that the pigs are already elevating themselves above the rest of the animals by assuming leadership positions rather than laboring physically. This again is an indicator that class divisions are developing on Animal Farm, and that the pigs are the ones who will end up assuming privileged, upper-class roles in this society...Read more

Chapter 4

The other farmers’ desire to make Mr. Jones’s misfortune work in their best interests suggests that when it comes to leaders like these farmers, it’s natural for them to want to amass as much power as possible with little regard for how their power might negatively affect those below them...Read more

Chapter 5

Mollie leaving is a parallel to how many in the middle class simply left the USSR while they still could. If Snowball or Napoleon were to assess her motivations and the implications of her leaving, they’d likely say that Mollie has bought into the narrative that she needs to strive to become a member of the ruling class in order to leave a successful life—something that Animalism tries to discount by insisting that class itself is silly. This is hypocritical, of course, as the pigs are becoming their own upper class...Read more

Chapter 6

This work on Sunday is clearly voluntary in name only, but because the other animals are so poorly educated and devoted to the cause, they can’t parse out that voluntary doesn’t actually mean anything here. Further, by focusing on the idea that humans won’t profit from their work, the pigs can instead direct attention to the cause...Read more

Chapter 7

Note that while the humans’ spite comes from the fairly impartial omniscient narrator, it’s likely more reflective of the effectiveness of Napoleon’s campaign to cast all humans as the enemy, who of course will be thrilled to see the animals fail. That the animals find so much inspiration in Boxer also speaks to the success of Napoleon’s attempt to, at least in terms of rhetoric, elevate the worker to a revered place in society...Read more

Chapter 8

Benjamin’s refusal to read the Commandments, when it seems he’s the only one who understands anything, continues to situate him as someone who enables the pigs’ rule by keeping silent. Clover, on the other hand, doesn’t have the education or the suspicion of her leaders to recognize that the Commandment truly was changed...Read more

Chapter 9

Even though Boxer looks forward to retirement, keep in mind that Napoleon just reallocated the retirement pasture for barley—a suggestion that Boxer is being overly idealistic about whether or not retirement is even in the cards for him. His devotion to the windmill and to Animal Farm, meanwhile, shows that he’s still easily manipulated into serving those projects at the expense of his own health...Read more

Chapter 10

That Clover is 14 and not retired means that even if Boxer had survived, he too wouldn’t have had anything great to look forward to: Animal Farm was going to continue to abuse him until he dropped dead, whether that was before or after the age of retirement. When Napoleon insists that Snowball’s promises for the windmill weren’t in line with Animalism, it’s another way for Napoleon to corrupt the ideals to serve his own agenda. Insisting that Animalism entails living frugally allows him to justify keeping the animals in poor conditions, while living in luxury himself....Read more