• A good and smooth read, I was able to one-shot it in around 3 hours
• A satirical story when one realises the book is not about animals
• It shows all the way one tries to gain power
  • Intimidating or eliminating the opponent
    • When Napoleon (a pig) intimidates Snowball (another pig) by always opposing him and at end making him flee away using his 9 canine dogs
  • Make people hate the opponent more
    • By calling all the disaster as it was done by snowball, he caused the wind, he caused the shortage in crops
  • Gaslighting / Manipulating people
    • Adding extra words to commandments and saying it was always like that
      • Animals cant kill other animals → Animals cant kill other animals without reason
    • Using Squealer (another pig) who was good in persuading people to make people agree on things
    • Always telling things are going correct “verbally” to create false hopes
  • Creating fear
    • Public execution of people who opposed by giving reasons which were never backed by any proof
  • Building supreme image
    • Today it rained because of Napoleon, the cows milked because of Napoleon
    • Making other people work while he enjoys in his farmhouse, and use spokesperson to communicate
  • Finally change the entire narrative
    • Work with the people once they wanted to destroy perhaps become like one
    • They saw, pigs walking on 2 legs, was a goosebump line
    • “Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad” → “Four Legs Good, Two Legs better”
• Basically it starts with an agenda of doing good for all, and then they start getting the taste of power and start misusing it
  • Shown quite well from the change in attitude and lifestyle of “Napoleon” (a pig)
  • There is always a person like Benjamin (old donkey) who sees everything, knows everything, but doesn’t react much
  • Boxer (strong horse), gave his whole life to the farm, work hard was his mantra, at the end when he got injured, he was sent to slaughterhouse by Napoleon (even that narrative was washed out by telling blatant lies)
  • Mollie (mare), who just escaped as it started
• At the end it repeats all over again
  • People forget what happens years ago, someone takes advantage of that start building this entire narrative, and slowly starts breaking that upto their own advantage
• My guess, even if the story turned out opposite, and Snowball intimidated Napoleon instead, the ending would have been same :(
  • Power is addictive, and once one sees the potential it is difficult to resist