Summaries and Critical Commentaries

Abstract

The book opens with Mr Jones, the proprietor of Manor Farm, lurching across his yard and going off drunk to bed. The animals, waiting for his light to go out, assemble in the barn to hear what Old Major, the prize Middle White boar, has to say to them. We meet the animals on the farm as they arrive and already know something of their characters as they settle down to listen. Major has had a dream; he is approaching the end of his time and wishes to communicate to the others the wisdom he has acquired during his long, thoughtful life. This, briefly, is what he tells the animals:

• (a) Animals’ lives are ‘miserable, laborious and short’; they live at subsistence level while working to capacity; the moment they cease to be useful they are cruelly killed; misery and slavery is the lot of all animals in England.

• (b) The reason this is so is not that the land cannot support them but because the produce of their labour is stolen by man; remove man and the problem is solved.

• (c) Man is the only creature that consumes without producing, taking everything from the animals except what is absolutely necessary to them.