I finished George Orwell’s Animal Farm last night. Took me one sitting. It’s a thin book, the kind you could lend to a friend and never get back, and I kept telling myself it was just a story about some farm in England and a revolution that went wrong somewhere far away, a long time ago.
I’ve been telling myself that since morning. It isn’t working.
Quick recap if you haven’t read it. The animals throw out Mr. Jones, their drunk and cruel farmer. They paint seven rules on the barn wall, all about equality. The pigs are the smart ones, so naturally they end up doing the thinking for everyone. And then, slowly, nobody can say exactly when, the farm turns into something the animals don’t recognise anymore.
That’s it. That’s the book. So why couldn’t I sleep?
Maybe because of the rules on the wall. In the book they keep changing at night. A word gets added. A line goes missing. When the animals complain, they’re told their memory is weak. I thought about that while reading how chapters are quietly vanishing from our children’s textbooks. Whole centuries gone. Kings who ruled for generations, just… edited out. Even evolution was found to be surplus to requirements. A child who never reads the old version can’t ever say the wall used to look different.
Then there’s Squealer. The pig with the numbers. Every week he climbs up and announces that production is up and everyone’s better off, and nobody ever sees the actual ledger. I remember a jobs survey that came back with a very unhappy number and was mysteriously held back till the voting was done. And the headcount of the country, the one that’s supposed to happen every ten years like clockwork? Still waiting. Funny how hard it is to feed animals you haven’t counted.
Snowball made me laugh, honestly. He’s chased off the farm in the first half of the book, and after that literally everything is his fault. Windmill falls, Snowball did it. Harvest fails, Snowball. Our Snowball left the farm before most of us were born. The man’s been gone for decades and he’s still the busiest employee in the country.
And the windmill. Orwell’s animals nearly die building it, and nobody asks what it’s even for, because look how big it is. We have the tallest statue in the world now. A new building for the pigs to argue in, with a golden sceptre carried in by priests. A bullet train that has been arriving for years. Look up, the animals are told. Don’t look at your feet.
Speaking of animals who actually do the work. I kept thinking of that winter, and the summer after it, when farmers sat outside the capital for a whole year over three laws nobody had really asked them about. Some of them never went home. They were called terrible names on television. Then one fine morning the laws were withdrawn like nothing happened. The names were not withdrawn.
You know the sheep. Four legs good, two legs bad. Anytime somebody in the yard starts a question, the sheep start bleating until you can’t hear it anymore. I don’t think Orwell could have imagined WhatsApp. Our sheep wake up earlier than the roosters now. Their phrase has changed a bit. Ask a question and you’re anti-something, and would you please go live on the neighbouring farm.
The dogs are the part that stayed with me. Napoleon takes some puppies away and raises them in private, and when they’re grown they don’t chase foxes. They guard the farmhouse from the other animals. Ours are very busy dogs. Though I’ve noticed they mostly patrol one side of the yard. And if an animal from that side hops the fence and joins the farmhouse? The dogs just… lose interest. People have started calling it a washing machine. I think of it as a door that only swings one way.
There was also, for a while, a system where sacks of grain could be left at the farmhouse door with no name on them. Totally anonymous. The highest court finally said no, you can’t do that. By then most of the sacks had already been delivered. To guess which door, you don’t need Orwell.
Moses the raven I’ll be careful with, because faith is precious and I mean that. In the book he flies around talking about Sugarcandy Mountain, a paradise in the clouds where every sacrifice gets repaid. The pigs don’t believe him, but they keep him around. Useful bird. A farm that promises heaven later can get away with promising a lot less right now.
And Boxer. God, Boxer. The big loyal horse. “I will work harder.” “Napoleon is always right.” The best creature in the whole book, and the one it’s cruellest to. I thought of the workers who, one spring, were given four hours before the entire country shut its gates, and who walked home. Hundreds of kilometres, on highways, kids on their shoulders. Some of them still say he must have had his reasons. That’s Boxer. He never stops believing, and that’s exactly what breaks your heart.
Everyone knows the ending. The animals press their faces to the farmhouse window and see the pigs having dinner with the humans they once overthrew, and they can’t tell which face is which.
I look through windows too, these days. I see animals who used to shout at each other across the yard now sitting at the same table, same colours, same glasses raised. And the pigs who ran the farm before? When it was their turn, they did plenty of the same things. Nobody at that table has clean hooves.
So no, I can’t tell which face is which either. I don’t think Orwell could. I think that was the whole point.
I’m not naming anyone. I’m just someone who read a small book on a weeknight and hasn’t been able to put it down since.
All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.
