Animal Farm
Critique • Quotes
Original title
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story
First publication
1945
Literature form
Novella
Genres
Literary, fantasy
Writing language
English
Author's country
England
Length
Approx. 32,000 words
Notable lines
Mr Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes.
— First line
"Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short."
"Why then do we continue in this miserable condition? Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us by human beings. There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems."
FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BAD
A few days later, when the terror caused by the executions had died down, some of the animals remembered—or thought they remembered—that the Sixth Commandment decreed "No animal shall kill any other animal." And though no one cared to mention it in the hearing of the pigs or the dogs, it was felt that the killings which had taken place did not square with this. Clover asked Benjamin to read her the Sixth Commandment, and when Benjamin, as usual, said that he refused to meddle in such matters, she fetched Muriel. Muriel read the Commandment for her. It ran: "No animal shall kill any other animal WITHOUT CAUSE." Somehow or other, the last two words had slipped out of the animals' memory.
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL.
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.
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.
— Last line
Critique • Quotes