Characters & Commandments
This animal is the initial mastermind of the Rebellion, inspiring the others with his dream before his death.
Who is Old Major?
This major construction project do the animals spend over a year working on, only for it to be destroyed twice.
What is the Windmill?
The historical event in Russia that the Animal Farm rebellion itself represents.
What is the Russian Revolution (or the October Revolution)?
The rhetorical term for lying about past events, such as when Squealer changes the story of the Battle of the Cowshed.
What is Gaslighting or Revisionist History?
This is the main setting of the story "Three Skeleton Key."
What is a remote lighthouse?
This pig serves as Napoleon’s chief propagandist, public speaker, and master of revisionist history.
Who is Squealer?
This is the name of the human farmer who originally owned Animal Farm.
Who is Mr. Jones?
The primary emotion that Napoleon and Squealer use to control the common animals, often asking, "Surely you don’t want Jones back?"
What is Fear or Dread?
The technique used when the pigs blame Snowball for the destruction of the windmill.
What is Scapegoating?
This is what the story title, "Three Skeleton Key," is named after, according to the legend.
What are three escaped convicts who died on the rock?
This is the name of the philosophical system derived from Old Major’s teachings.
What is Animalism?
The truth about Boxer’s fate after he is injured—he was sent here.
What is the knacker or slaughterer?
This is the political system the pigs' gradual changes and eventual tyranny represent.
What is corruption and tyranny (or Stalinism/Totalitarianism)?
This weakness of the common animals allowed Squealer to physically change the commandments on the side of the barn without contradiction.
What is Illiteracy?
This creature eventually overruns the lighthouse and traps the three men inside.
What are hungry rats?
This skeptical animal is cynical about the Rebellion from the start, often repeating, "Donkeys live a long time."
Who is Benjamin?
The farm is renamed this at the very end of the novel, symbolizing the total failure of the revolution.
What is Manor Farm?
This group of animals are indoctrinated and trained by Napoleon from a young age to serve as his security force.
What are the dogs?
The rhetorical technique Napoleon employs by making public appearances rarely and creating poems about himself.
What is Cult of Personality?
This is the initial unusual behavior of the approaching ship that attracts the keepers' attention.
What is sailing an unnatural course directly toward the island?
This is the single, final commandment the pigs reduce the original seven laws down to.
What is "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"?
This inability is the clear indication that the revolution has failed when the pigs invite the human farmers to dinner at the end.
What is the inability to distinguish the pigs from the humans?
The tragic fate of the loyal horse, Boxer, most clearly symbolizes Napoleon's betrayal of this dedicated social class during the Soviet era.
What is the working class or proletariat?
This is the term for a word or phrase that substitutes a less offensive term for a more harsh one, such as calling the horses' small pasture "an allotment."
What is Euphemism?
This ingenious method was eventually employed by the authorities to rescue the men and get rid of the threat.
What is using a barge covered in meat to lure the rats away and sink them?