Animal Farm Chapter 4 Summary

Animal Farm Chapter 4 Summary

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Main Characters

Napoleon- he is a large Berkshire boar with a reputation for getting his own way. Napoleon is the main villain in animal farm.

Mr. Jones- he is the original owner of an animal farm and a heavy drinker.

Muriel – she is a white goat and one of the few animals who become fully literate.

Benjamin- he is one of the oldest and wisest animals on the farm and among the few who can read properly

Snowball – he is the pig who challenges Napoleon for control of Animal Farm after the Rebellion.

Mr. Frederick – is the owner of the neighboring farm of Stinchfield. Mr. Frederick is vicious, cruel, and calculating, and rumors circulate that he is especially horrible to his farm animals.

Mr. Pilkington – he is the farmer who owns Foxwood, one of Animal Farm’s neighbors.

Plot Summary

By late summer, news of Animal Farm has spread across half the county. Mr. Jones lives ignominiously in Willingdon, drinking and complaining about his misfortune. Mr. Pilkington and Mr. Frederick, who own the adjoining farms, fear that disenchantment will spread among their own animals. Their rivalry with each other, however, prevents them from working together against Animal Farm. They merely spread rumors about the farm’s inefficiency and moral reprehensibility. Meanwhile, animals everywhere begin singing "Beasts of England,” which they have learned from flocks of pigeons sent by Snowball, and many begin to behave rebelliously.

At last, in early October, a flight of pigeons alerts Animal Farm that Mr. Jones has begun marching on the farm with some of Pilkington’s and Frederick’s men. Snowball, who has studied books about the battle campaigns of the renowned Roman general Julius Caesar, prepares a defense and leads the animals in an ambush on the men. Boxer fights courageously, as does Snowball, and the humans suffer a quick defeat. The animals’ losses amount only to a single sheep, who they give a hero’s burial.

Boxer, who believes that he has unintentionally killed a stable boy in the chaos, expresses his regret at taking a life, even though it is a human one. Snowball tells him not to feel guilty, asserting that "the only good human being is a dead one.” Mollie, as is her custom, has avoided any risk to herself by hiding during the battle. Snowball and Boxer each receive medals with the inscription "Animal Hero, First Class.” The animals discover Mr. Jones’s gun where he dropped it in the mud. They place it at the base of the flagstaff, agreeing to fire it twice a year: on October 12th, the anniversary of the Battle of the Cowshed, and on Midsummer’s Day, the anniversary of the Rebellion.

Themes

1. Totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is a form of government in which the state seeks to control every facet of life, from economics and politics to each individual’s ideas and beliefs. Different totalitarian states have different justifications for their rule, but Animal Farm suggests that all totalitarian regimes are fundamentally the same: those in power care only about maintaining their power by any means necessary, and they do so by oppressing the individual and the lower classes.
2. The Soviet Union. While Animal Farm condemns all forms of totalitarianism, it is most explicitly a bitter attack on the Soviet Union. Though the author supported the ideals of socialism, he strongly opposed the Soviet Union’s descent into totalitarianism under Stalin in the decades before and during World War II. Animal Farm satirically attacks the Soviet Union by mirroring many events from Soviet history, and though Animal Farm is subtitled "A Fairy Story,” almost nothing that happens in it is at all fantastical; nearly every event, and indeed every character, correlates to a historical event, person, or group of people.

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