The relationship between Snowball and Napoleon

After the rebellion on the Manor Farm, the two boars named Napoleon and Snowball emerge as the new leaders of the Farm. Both boars had very different views about how to lead the Farm which is now named Animal Farm.
Snowball on one side was careful, loyal and brave and always wanted the best for every animal on the farm. Napoleon on the other side was getting more and more rude and selfish. He only pursued his own interests and his well-being.
A good example for the different intentions of Napoleon and Snowball could be seen in their plans for the upcoming windmill. Snowball wanted to use the power of the windmill to do a big part of the work from the animals, so they would have to work much less. Also he wanted to get electric lights in the barns and heatings during winter. Napoleon's intentions on the other side where characterized by greed and egoism. He only wanted the windmill to increase his profit. He didn't want to let the animals work less and didn't want to use the electricity for more comfort in the barns.

Napoleon didn't like Snowball at all. He saw him as an enemy. He was frightened of losing his power, because Snowball was a much better leader and appealed more successful by the other animals. Whenever Snowball brought up a suggestion for vote, Napoleon automatically suggested the opposite of it, even if he wasn't interested in the subject of the vote. I interpreted this as a clear act of hate and detestation of Napoleon against Snowball. Snowball on the other hand accepted Napoleon as he accepted every other animal on the farm, even though Napoleon was his political enemy.
But sadly one day Napoleon chased Snowball away with his security force of nine big dogs.
Instead of a nice democratic system the animals had now to suffer under the dictatorship of Napoleon.

What I learned personally from reading this book

First of all, I noticed that reading the book was more interesting than I expected. Reading it in English made it more attractive for me because I could improve my English skills through that, which is a goal of mine. I found it very nice that we could pick a book of our own choice from a list with many interesting suggestions.

The level of the English in the book "Animal Farm" fitted very well to my actual knowledge of English. I could read it with little difficulties and understood nearly every sentence.
Of course there where also sentences which I had to read a second or a third time to finally understand them.

I think trough reading the book I could improve my vocabulary. There were so many new words which I didn't know yet. I could understand the meaning of some of this words out of the context, other words I had to type in my transportal translator or, if I was in front of my computer, I translated them online.

Of course I didn't learn every new word by heart, but I can say for sure, I could expand my vocabulary.
Many words which only appeared once in the book I forgot, but there where also a lot of words which appeared repeatedly. These I could easily memorize (for example: labour, windmill, boar, poultry, harvest, barn etc.).

I think my English could also benefit from writing these blog entries. I'm getting more comfortable in writing longer texts on my own. In school we normally only practise grammar, for example by setting sentences in different tenses.
In these blog entries we can finally show what we've learned and can put it in practise.
I really enjoy this task, it's a welcome change.

The author's main message / purpose

The main message of George Orwell's book the "Animal Farm" is that we citizens, should always question the goverment's decisions and be aware of what it is doing, because the people in the government are often full of greed and they are corrupt and selfish and don't care about the well-being of the citizens.
People should not only sit back and accept everything the goverment throws at them.
They should stand up for their rights and needs, even if it seems very difficult to change anything.

Also they should be aware of history, because it often repeats itself, as we can see in "Animal Farm", after the revolution: all the animals were so happy, but as time passed, it was getting worse and worse under the regime of the pigs.
In the end, the situation was just as terrible as in the old days when Mr. Jones was in charge.
But most of the animals unfortunately have forgotten how it was back then, so they couldn't compare their actual situation to their previous one and accepted it without doing anything against it.
This is why we should always be aware of our history.

Diary entry for the character Boxer

Dear Diary

It's Boxer again. You know I have trouble learning the alphabet past the forth letter, so please be patient with me. But today is such an amazing day in my life and also for all the other animals on the farm, so I have to write an entry.
The other animals and I have finally completed the construction of the windmill, after endless days of hard work. We had a nice celebration and comrade Napoleon congratulated everyone of us.
Only thanks to the great mind of comrade Napoleon we could accomplished this. He is the best leader that we can imagine and he's always right.

I gave my best and always worked as hard as I could. I often worked until late at night until it was too dark to see something. But my plan for the future is to work even harder.
I'm very pround of our accomplishment and hope that now that we have completed our windmill, we will finally get bigger food rations.

Characterization of the character Napoleon

Napoleon is a big, impressive berkshire boar. After the reign of Mr. Jones he instantly tries to take a high position on the farm. But Snowball, a very smart and popular pig, who took very good care of the needs of all the animals stood in his way for. Napoleon wanted to be the almighty animal on the farm so he violently took over the farm.

The longer he was in power, the worse his personality became. He never had enough power, he always strived for more. Every animal had to do exactly what he wanted. He was a ruthless leader and all the animals on the farm had to suffer under his regime.
His greed could not be satisfied, he always wanted more and more. He exploited the other animals for his own needs and showed no compassion. He also didn't take responsibility for his mistakes. Everytime something went wrong, he blamed Snowball for it. He said Snowball would sabotage the Animal Farm. But this wasn't true. He spread lies about Snowball, so the other animals wouldn't remember what a good pig he was and how good the life on the farm had been when he was still in charge.

He was extremely egoistic and racialist, because only the animals of his kind had enough food and freetime. However he could manage to stay in charge as the leader of the farm because he was very good at manipulating others.

He was narcissistic and he used every means to get what he wanted.

My own recount

The animals at the Manor Farm are very unhappy and not pleased with their situation because Mr. Jones, the owner of the farm, was drinking all the time and didn't take good care of his animals. He was often angry and forgot to give the animals food and water and was also too lazy to clean their barn.

One night, the oldest pig named Old Major invited all animals into his barn to talk about the situation. He told the animals that they all had to work so hard without getting anything back.
He also told them that they had to change something otherwise they would only get exploited for the greed of one person and have to live like slaves.

Soon after his speech Old Major died.
Time passed by and the situation didn't get any better. One night, when Mr. Jones came home from the Red Lion pub, he was really drunk and aggressive and didn't feed the animals.
This was too much for the animals an they planed a revolt.
All animals together hunted Mr. Jones away from his farm.

They were now on their own and were very happy that they were finally free.
They changed the name of the farm to Animal Farm.
The pigs were the most intelligent creatures on the farm, so they leaded the farm.
They invented new rules like "Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy", "No animal shall drink alcohol" and "All animals are equal".
They still had to work hard but now they worked for themselves and not for their owner, that was the big difference which made them happy.

The leadership was hold by two different pigs. One named Snowball, the other named Napoleon.
In every suggestion or new rule they wanted to invent, they had different opinions.
The animals on the farm always could vote for or against a new rule.

Snowball always brought up very nice ideas and rules because he cared very much for the welfare of every animal on the farm.
But Napoleon was getting more and more selfish and rude. He secretly raised some dogs for his own purpose. One day he set his dogs on Snowball and banished him from the Animal Farm.

Now Napoleon had full control over the Animal Farm. No animal dared to contradict Napoleon.
He was feared because he had his big strong dogs under his command.
He used a pig called Squealer as his right hand. Squealer was the propaganda minister of the farm and he could slowly convince most animals to respect and honor Napoleon as their great leader.
He commanded the animals to build a windmill. He stole the plan for the construction of the windmill from Snowball, who wanted to build one when he was still on the farm.
The animals had to work extremely hard, much harder then when Snowball was still there. Also Napoleon shortend the food ration for all the animals except for the pigs.
Generally the pigs didn't have to work as hard as the other animals and they only did non-physical labor.

At one time the humans tried to conquer back the Animal Farm. They failed, but they could blast away the windmill. So the animals had to rebuild the windmill which needed extreme efforts. As a consequence Napoleon again increased the working times and decreased the food ration.
The longer Napoleon was in power, the more the animals had to suffer. Only the pigs had continously a better lifestyle.
Nearly all the rules which were invented after the revolt, which were standing for equality and freedom, Napoleon had changed for his needs.
He began trading goods like eggs and wood with humans to buy alcohol and other consumables he wanted.
The pigs acted more and more like humans.
In the end, the animals on the farm saw no difference between the life they had when Mr. Jones was in power and between the one they had under Napoleon.

My impressions of the book

The book "The animal farm" was written by George Orwell and was first published in England on the 17th August 1945.
I found it very interesting to read even if I normally don't read books.
I chose this book because I had some faded childhood memories about the film of the book.
I couldn't remember what the story was about. I have seen the film at the age of eight and at that time I was probably too young to understand it. So I thought I would choose this book for my English task to find out more about its story.

At first it begins like a normaly story, except that the animals can talk to each other.
But the more you read, the more you understand that it's about the politic situation during the Stalin era in Russia.
Every animal on the farm represents a figure of the dictatorship of Stalin.
I was very impressed by how well George Orwell conveyed the situation during the Stalin era through the symbolic meanings of the animal farm and each creature on it.

Animal Farm - George Orwell

Hello and welcome to my blog!

My name is Dominic Bühler and I will write several blog entries about different topics about the book "Animal Farm".
At the moment I'm going to school at BMS Winterthur and this blog is part of my English studies.

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you'll enjoy it!
Please feel free to leave any comments!

Animal Farm

Author: George Orwell

Original Bookcover

Link to the full movie "Animal farm" on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGSiFESwWtI