Chapter 8

By autumn the windmill is finished and named ‘Napoleon Mill’.

Frederick and his men attack the farm but are eventually driven off but not before they blow up the windmill.

Squealer declares the battle a victory despite the animals being worse off than before.

This chapter sees a significant shift in Napoleon’s character. He has proved he is able to manipulate the truth at a whim to suit himself and the changing of the sixth commandment to ‘No animal shall kill another animal without cause’ has given him totalitarian rule.

Napoleon, like Stalin, has become a paranoid egomaniac:

• He virtually vanishes from public
• When he is seen, a black cockerel marches in front heralding his arrival
• He lives in separate rooms in the farmhouse from the other pigs
• He only eats from Jones’ Crown Derby dinner service
• He orders the gun to be fired on his birthday
• He names the completed windmill ‘Napoleon Windmill’
• He has a pig named Pinkeye to taste all his food
• He has the animals slowly file past him as he lies on a bed of straw next to piles of money from the sale of the wood
• A poem is written about him, which in its use of language reads more like a prayer. Napoleon has it painted on the barn together with an image of his profile.

The animals also start to exhibit brainwashed behaviour by the way they credit Napoleon with all improvements on Animal Farm, they praise him for the taste of the drinking water and give him flattering titles such as ‘Protector of the Sheepfold’ and ‘Duckling’s Friend’.

Snowball’s character receives further discredit. He is blamed for planting weeds amongst the crops and the memory of his heroic deeds at the Battle of the Cowshed is refuted.

Squealer’s propaganda goes up a gear. The animals are working harder than ever on the windmill but their food allowances reduce and they start to starve. By blinding them with facts and figures, Squealer is able to ‘prove’ to them that they are actually receiving more food. The animals accept this but they would sooner have more food.

The animals are awoken one night to find Squealer lying on the ground under the wall where the commandments are written. He is dazed and beside him is an upturned pot of white paint and a broken ladder. He is rescued and escorted back to the farmhouse by the dogs.

Despite the obvious evidence before their eyes the animals are too gullible or too blinded by devotion to Napoleon to see what is going on.

After the Battle of the Windmill, Boxer cannot understand how Squealer can call it a victory when all they have achieved is to gain back what they had in the first place at the price of the deaths and injuries to the animals.

Boxer’s unintentionally insightful ‘then we have won back what we had before’ makes Squealer’s double talk look foolish for the first time.

Two further commandments are changed by the addition of two words: ‘No animal shall kill another without cause’ and ‘No animal shall drink alcohol to excess’.

The pigs are becoming more corrupt. After finding a crate of whisky in the cellar and enjoying it amongst themselves, they decide to brew and distil their own alcohol, ploughing up the paddock put aside for retiring animals to grow barley. This illustrates that their first priority is their own comfort.