Allegory — Who's Who in History
Napoleon most closely represents this Russian leader.
Joseph Stalin
This is the term for the reader knowing Boxer is headed to the knacker while Boxer believes he is going to a hospital.
Dramatic irony
The windmill symbolises this: a grand promise that keeps the animals working while leaders profit.
Progress / the revolution's promises (used to exploit labour)
Napoleon decides to trade with humans. The immediate consequence for the hens is this.
Their eggs are taken to sell, and their rebellion is crushed
Boxer collapses while rebuilding the windmill, weakened by overwork and a split hoof. Where do the pigs say he is going?
A veterinary hospital
Snowball most closely represents this exiled revolutionary, later turned into a scapegoat.
Leon Trotsky
Name the irony when the pigs call the Battle of the Windmill a great victory after the windmill is destroyed and many animals are killed.
Dramatic irony (accept: the pigs' propaganda victory)
The farmhouse, once forbidden, becomes the pigs' home. What does moving into it symbolise?
The new rulers taking over the old rulers' place and privileges
The animals accept Squealer's figures showing more food and longer lives. The consequence is that they stop doing this.
Questioning Napoleon / trusting their own experience
Squealer later claims Boxer died peacefully praising Napoleon. What is the truth the reader already knows?
Boxer was sold to the knacker for slaughter
Old Major's speech and death before the rebellion parallel this thinker whose ideas outlived him.
Karl Marx
Early in the book, the pigs take the milk and apples “for brainwork.” What does this small theft foreshadow?
The pigs taking every privilege for themselves while claiming it is for the animals' good
Moses and his Sugarcandy Mountain give the animals hope for this instead of change now.
The afterlife / heaven
Benjamin can read, but does not warn the others about the knacker's van in time. What is the consequence of his silence?
Boxer is taken and the animals lose their strongest worker — and their last chance to act
Moses is allowed back on the farm in Chapter 9 for this practical reason.
His stories keep the animals passive and hopeful instead of rebellious
The dogs, raised in secret and used to chase Snowball and terrorise dissenters, parallel this kind of force.
A secret police / the NKVD
Boxer's maxim “Napoleon is always right” is ironic because of this fact about Napoleon's decisions.
Napoleon is repeatedly wrong — the windmill, the timber sale, the food shortage — yet Boxer never questions him
The repeated songs — Beasts of England, then the loyalist anthem — show what about control?
Whoever controls the song controls what the animals are allowed to hope for
Napoleon sells the timber to Frederick instead of Pilkington. Trace the consequence in two steps.
Frederick pays with forged notes, then attacks and destroys the windmill
At the final dinner, Napoleon announces the farm will go back to this name — a sign the revolution is officially over.
The Manor Farm
Mr. Pilkington and Mr. Frederick, the neighbouring farmers who both court and fear Animal Farm, represent what in the allegory?
Rival foreign powers (Britain/France and Germany) dealing with the Soviet Union for their own gain
The final scene, where the animals cannot tell pig from man, is ironic in this specific way.
The revolution overthrew humans to end oppression, and ends by creating new human-like oppressors
The commandments are painted on the barn wall, then altered, then reduced to one. What does the wall itself symbolise by the end?
Law rewritten by power until it justifies whatever power does
By Chapter 10, the animals work as hard as ever but the farm is richer. Who benefits, and what does that prove about the revolution?
The pigs (and the farmers they dine with) benefit; the revolution changed who owns the farm, not how it is run
The book's last line is that the creatures outside looked from pig to man and could not tell which was which. In one sentence, what is Orwell warning readers about?
Revolutions that only replace one set of rulers with another, without changing power itself, will end where they began