ANIMAL FARM
Chapters VIII and IX
1. What purpose is served by the production figures Squealer reads to
the animals?
2. How is Napoleon becoming more and more like a typical dictator?
3. What makes the battle against Frederick's men different from the
Battle of the Cowshed? The animals celebrate a victory, but at what
cost?
4. Why are the animals so easily fooled, even when they find Squealer
with a ladder and white paint beside the barn at night?
5. Why does Napoleon allow Moses to return and to tell his stories
about Sugarcandy Mountain
6. What happens to Boxer? How do the animals accept it?
7. Give examples of peer pressure as used in the novel, paying close
attention to Boxer and the sheep.
8. Repeatedly, the animals sacrifice themselves in order to complete the
windmill, only to see it destroyed time and again. What, if any,
symbolic role does the windmill play? How do you account for the
pigs' insistence that it be built and re-built?
ANIMAL FARM
Chapter X
1. What changes have the years brought to the farm?
2. How does Orwell make fun of bureaucracy?
3. All seven commandments are erased. What is the new commandment
and how has it been true from the beginning?
4. At the conference with neighboring farmers, what new changes does
Napoleon point out?
5. Among the various characters in the novel, whom do you feel is the
noblest or most worthy? Which animal would be best suited to
lead a group against Napoleon and the pigs? What qualities would this
animal need to posses to do so?
6. In reading Animal Farm, Lord Acton's famous pronouncement:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" may come to
mind. How and why is this statement applicable to the course of
events in the novel?
7. The novel ends with a chilling passage, wherein Clover notices
something odd about the humans and pigs meeting in the farmhouse:
"Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now,
what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to
man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was
impossible to say which was which.” What is Orwell saying here? How do
you interpret this final scene.
8. What exactly is censorship? How did the pigs practice censorship?
How does a government typically exercise its power of censorship?
How might this power be misused?