|
The Rebellion happens. It is preceded by the animals\' preparation for it and the human master\'s mismanagement and neglect; then there is a spontaneous revolt. Next we see the animals\' joy in the victorious revolution--the farm is theirs!--and the first steps at making a new society based on animal solidarity and equality. This principle is subtly undermined throughout, however, by the increasingly dominant role played by the pigs, especially Napoleon and Snowball. Finally an incident at the very end of the chapter reveals the first clear betrayal of the revolutionary ideal.
Like many teachers and prophets, Major dies before he can see his dream realized. But it immediately has a profound effect on the way the animals see their world:
Major\'s speech had given to the more intelligent animals on the farm a completely new outlook on life. They did not know when the Rebellion predicted by Major would take place, they had no reason for thinking that it would be within their own lifetime, but they saw clearly that it was their duty to prepare for it.
But our careful reading of Chapter I leads us to be alert to what follows:
The work of teaching and organizing the others fell naturally upon the pigs, who were generally recognized as being the cleverest of the animals.
These words suggest a disturbing contradiction once again: preparation for an egalitarian revolution is being led by those who seem to be on the top of a natural hierarchy.
We are then introduced to the pigs--Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer. Part of their work has been to elaborate old Major\'s \"teachings\" into a \"complete system of thought\" they call Animalism. Major\'s vision has been transformed into a doctrine. But this is only the first transformation his ideas will undergo.
NOTE: Not all of the animals immediately accept the doctrine of Animalism. Some of them question the need for revolution--and are dismissed as being stupid and apathetic. Look at some of the questions the animals raise. Do you think all of their objections are stupid? Do you think Orwell thought they were?
We would expect Boxer and Clover, hardworking and simple, to be the \"most faithful disciples\" of the new vision. And they are: \"...having once accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments.\" This quotation highlights that unsettling contradiction once again: Boxer and Clover are working for the Rebellion in the name of equality, yet their position seems subordinate--worse still, naturally subordinate--to the pigs.
As for Moses, the tame raven, we recall that he was the only animal who didn\'t even come to the meeting in the barn. He represents religion in the fable--he encourages the animals to comfort themselves for the troubles of this life by thinking of the happiness to come in the afterlife, Sugarcandy Mountain: \"...some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, and the pigs had to argue very hard to persuade them that there was no such place.\" The new faith replaces the old with difficulty.
Next Orwell swiftly sketches Farmer Jones\' increasing mismanagement and neglect. Finally, one day in June, Jones goes on a binge and forgets to feed the animals all day. Out of sheer hunger, they break into the storeroom and begin to help themselves. When Jones and his men charge in and start whipping them, the \"Rebellion\" occurs:
With one accord, though nothing of the kind had been planned beforehand, they flung themselves upon their tormentors. Jones and his men suddenly found themselves being butted and kicked from all sides.... They had never seen animals behave like this before, and this sudden uprising of creatures whom they were used to thrashing and maltreating just as they chose, frightened them almost out of their wits.... they gave up trying to defend themselves and took to their heels.
The Rebellion is spontaneous (\"nothing of the kind had been planned beforehand\"), but would it have happened without Major and without the animals\' preparation for it? At any rate, there is no leader; Orwell does not give the name of one single animal. For him, revolution is the affair of the people as a whole. And clearly, his sympathy is on the side of the Revolution, \"this sudden uprising of creatures whom [the masters] were used to thrashing and maltreating just as they chose.\"
Orwell\'s sympathy for the rebels\' joy in the victorious revolution is still more evident in the passages that follow. The animals gallop all around the farm \"as though to make sure that no human being was hiding anywhere upon it\"; then they race back to the farm buildings to destroy all the cruel traces of human oppression: bits, nose-rings, castrating knives, etc. \"All the animals capered with joy when they saw the whips going up in flames.\" (Keep this detail in mind. We\'ll see it again later.)
Perhaps Boxer goes too far when, after hearing Snowball declare that animals should shun any form of clothes as \"the mark of a human being,\" he burns a small hat he wore in summer to keep the flies out of his ears. And again, what may seem natural when we first read it (and what seems natural to the animals) is slightly sinister if we take a closer look: \"Napoleon led them back to the store-shed and served out a double ration of corn to everybody...\" Why does he have to lead and serve things out to them?
Still, the main intent of these passages is to make us feel the joy of those who have never owned anything when they suddenly realize they own the place they have worked in all their lives. There are scenes of joy in pure, utopian nature in a number of Orwell\'s other novels (particularly in Coming Up for Air and 1984), but they are usually dreams or memories that contrast ironically with a soiled and dismal present. In Animal Farm, this passage of revolutionary joy will contrast ironically with a harsh and dismal future.
The farmhouse, symbolizing the repressive past, is turned into a museum. After burying some hams (delightful detail--why do you think they do that?), they leave the house untouched, and agree unanimously that \"no animal must ever live there.\" And we\'ll see what happens to that resolution.
The pigs have taught themselves to read and write. Again a detail makes it come alive: \"from an old spelling book which had belonged to Mr. Jones\'s children and which had been thrown on the rubbish heap.\" Snowball succeeds in painting out MANOR FARM from the gate and painting in ANIMAL FARM. The pigs have also \"succeeded in reducing the principles of Animalism to Seven Commandments\" to be inscribed on the wall: \"they would form an unalterable law by which all the animals on Animal Farm must live for ever after.\" So Major\'s dream has gone from vision to doctrine to \"unalterable law,\" painted on the wall, thus:
1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
7. All animals are equal.
The rest of Animal Farm is about the progressive alteration of those written laws, until nothing is left of them except the--famous--corruption of the last one. Orwell is not only concerned with the corruption of an ideal--a corruption brought about by power (as we shall see); he is also concerned with the corruption of language that goes along with it.
At this point Orwell gives us an incident that reveals this corruption of language. The cows start lowing, and the animals realize that they have to be milked immediately. \"After a little thought,\" the pigs manage to do this, \"their trotters being well adapted to this task.\" (Once more, some animals just seem naturally superior!) \"Soon there were five buckets of frothing creamy milk at which many of the animals looked with considerable interest.\"
\"What is going to happen to all that milk?\" said someone.
\"Jones used sometimes to mix some of it in our mash,\" said one of the hens.
\"Never mind the milk, comrades!\" cried Napoleon, placing himself in front of the buckets. \"That will be attended to. The harvest is more important. Comrade Snowball will lead the way. I shall follow in a few minutes. Forward, comrades! The hay is waiting.\"
This parody of the discourse of a dishonest revolutionary leader marks the first time in Animal Farm that language has been used to hide something. (It is also Napoleon\'s first speech in the novel.) What it\'s hiding is personal privilege and greed:
So the animals trooped down to the hayfield to begin the harvest, and when they came back in the evening it was noticed that the milk had disappeared.
We see the leader exercising control through language--in such a way that it almost seems natural and inevitable.
For the first time, too, Orwell uses a kind of irony that he will come back to again and again--an irony inherent in the fable\'s point of view. The narrator tells the story from the naive viewpoint of the mass of animals and often in the passive voice (\"it was noticed that the milk had disappeared\") without giving any explanation for the event. Since the reader sees the explanation clearly enough, we can say that Orwell is using the oldest ironic trick there is: feigned ignorance. The effect on most readers is somewhere between a smile and a wince.
NOTE: You have probably begun to suspect that Animal Farm is a story that raises a variety of questions, a story that has meaning on many levels. The incident of the milk raises a series of interrelated problems. Let\'s separate them for convenience:
1. LANGUAGE: Napoleon\'s speech and its effect; Orwell\'s way of narrating the incident
2. POWER: How do the pigs get the milk? (See Chapter III for the rest of the story.)
3. THE IDEAL (generous solidarity) VERSUS THE REAL (the weaknesses of \"human nature,\" which the animals represent): Why did the pigs get the milk?
4. THE ELITE AND THE MASS
All these problems will come up again and again.
|
