The animals achieve a bountiful harvest, hold meetings to discuss the communal good, and create committees. Though the animals become somewhat literate, Snowball reduces the seven commandments to one maxim: “four legs good, two legs bad.” Tensions begin to rise after Napoleon takes Jessie and Bluebell’s puppies to care after himself, and when the animals discover that the pigs have been taking all the milk and apples. The setting of Animal Farm is a dystopia, which is an imagined world that is far worse than our own, as opposed to a utopia, which is an ideal place or state. Other dystopian novels include Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and Orwell's own 1984. Minimus– A poetic pig who writes the second national anthem of Animal Farm after the singing of "Beasts of England" is banned; later he composes a poem "Comrade Napoleon". Literary theorist John Rodden compares him to the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, [19] who eulogized Lenin and the Soviet Union, although Mayakovsky neither wrote anthems nor praised Stalin in his poems. However, it soon became apparent that Stalin’s Communist regime wasn’t working: huge swathes of the population were working hard, but didn’t have enough food to survive. They were starving to death.

Animal Farm (1954) is an animated film, in which Napoleon is eventually overthrown in a second revolution. In 1974, E. Howard Hunt revealed that he had been sent by the CIA's Psychological Warfare department to obtain the film rights from Orwell's widow, and the resulting 1954 animation was funded by the agency. [88] [89] Boxer, who believes that he has unintentionally killed a stable boy in the chaos, expresses his regret at taking a life, even though it is a human one. Snowball tells him not to feel guilty, asserting that “the only good human being is a dead one.” Mollie, as is her custom, has avoided any risk to herself by hiding during the battle. Snowball and Boxer each receive medals with the inscription “Animal Hero, First Class.” The animals discover Mr. Jones’s gun where he dropped it in the mud. They place it at the base of the flagstaff, agreeing to fire it twice a year: on October 12th, the anniversary of the Battle of the Cowshed—as they have dubbed their victory—and on Midsummer’s Day, the anniversary of the Rebellion. Analysis: Chapter IVThe hens– Unnamed. The hens are promised at the start of the revolution that they will get to keep their eggs, which are stolen from them under Mr. Jones. However, their eggs are soon taken from them under the premise of buying goods from outside Animal Farm. The hens are among the first to rebel, albeit unsuccessfully, against Napoleon. They are brutally suppressed through starvation.

The other animals from the farm, observing this through the window, can no longer tell which are the pigs and which are the men, because Napoleon and the other pigs are behaving so much like men now. Rodden, John (1999). Understanding Animal Farm: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-30201-5 . Retrieved 9 June 2012. Three weeks later Napoleon decides they should build the windmill after all—the windmill, he insists, was his idea to begin with, but Snowball stole his plans. The animals set to work, with Boxer leading. Focusing on the windmill reduces the productivity of the farm, and all the animals but the pigs and the dogs get less to eat. Napoleon institutes work on Sundays that’s voluntary, but animals who don’t work will receive reduced rations. The pigs engage a solicitor named Mr. Whymper to represent them and begin to trade with other farms. They move into Mr. Jones's farmhouse and start to sleep in beds. This confuses Clover, who thought this was forbidden. When she asks Muriel to read her the Commandment about beds, it reads: "No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets." Squealer, accompanied by dogs, insists that if the pigs don’t get enough sleep, Mr. Jones will return. Between 1952 and 1957, the CIA, in an operation codenamed Aedinosaur, sent millions of balloons carrying copies of the novel into Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, whose air forces tried to shoot the balloons down. [46]

Mr. Jones, along with men from neighboring farms, marches on Animal Farm. Snowball uses his knowledge of the Roman general Julius Caesar to lead the animals to victory against the humans. The animals retrieve Mr. Jones’s gun, agreeing to fire on the anniversary of their victory and on the anniversary of the Rebellion.