Compare and Contrast the Animals’ Situation at Manor Farm

Animal Farm starts off with Mr. Jones, who is a drunken farm owner, doing a terrible job at running his farm, known as Manor Farm. Eventually, the animals grow tired of their circumstances, and one brave pig, Old Major, decides to tell the entire farm of an idea that he has that could lead to happiness for all of the animals. This idea is that all of the animals can live together on the farm in peace and harmony, without fear of humans trying to control them.

All of the animals being equal is the only real requirement that is important for this plan to work. Three days after telling the entire farm of his genius plan of rebelling against the farm owner and running the farm themselves, Old Major dies. Old Major's death does not put a huge kink in the plan because three other pigs, Squealer, Snowball, and Napoleon, decide to take Old Major's idea and turn it into a philosophy that all of the farm animals will live by. The animals did end up beating the farmer in a battle, which would end up with him running off the land, leaving it to the animals. Naturally, after the farmer is out of the picture, the animals take over the farm and rename it Animal Farm. The main goal of the animals is to achieve Old Major's dream.

Little did the animals know, things would look as if they were going very well before they would turn around and be much worse than before. Snowball and Napoleon, two of the main pigs on the farm, do not agree on the way that the farm should be ran. On one hand, Snowball is trying to teach other animals how to read, whereas Napoleon takes a small group of puppies under his wing to teach them about Animalism, which is their philosophy that was inspired by Old Major. One big fight that occurs between Snowball and Napoleon is that Snowball wants to build a windmill, but Napoleon thinks it is a waste of time. A meeting was held to vote on whether or not the windmill should be built, and right after Napoleon's brief speech, the nine pups that he had taught Animalism to had been ordered, discretely, by Napoleon to chase Snowball off of the farm. With Snowball out of the picture, Napoleon assumes a full leadership position, and the first thing he puts into order is that there will be not be any more meetings, and that the pigs will make all of the decisions that need to be made regarding the farm, and these decisions will be made with the wellbeing of every animal in mind.

Napoleon ended up having the windmill built, but after a storm they realized the windmill had been destroyed. Napoleon assumes this is Snowball seeking revenge, so he puts to death anyone who might have been involved, or anyone who did not agree with him. In the meantime, Napoleon starts to act more and more like a human, doing things like drinking whiskey and walking on two legs, even though Animalism strictly forbids these types of things. Napoleon is doing fine, but the other animals are sad and hungry, which is not how Old Major's dream was supposed to play out. Napoleon ends up working pretty closely with nearby human farmers, and has intentions of allying the farm with humans again.

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