The Windmill & Boxer's Exploitation
Building the Windmill
After claiming Snowball’s windmill plans as his own, Napoleon forces the animals to begin construction. The work is gruelling — the animals must drag massive boulders up the quarry slope, breaking them into smaller pieces. The physical labour falls hardest on Boxer, who takes on extra shifts and adopts the motto “I will work harder.”
The windmill symbolises Stalin’s Five-Year Plans — ambitious industrialisation projects that promised modernisation but were built on the suffering of ordinary workers. Like the Five-Year Plans, the windmill is repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt, consuming enormous effort for little benefit to the working animals.
Meanwhile, the pigs do no physical labour at all. They “directed and supervised” from a distance. The gap between the ruling class (pigs) and the working class (other animals) grows ever wider, yet Squealer assures everyone that the pigs’ mental work is the most important contribution to the farm.
The Windmill Falls
In November, a violent storm destroys the half-built windmill. Napoleon immediately blames sabotage by Snowball, declaring “Snowball has done this thing!” He sentences Snowball to death in absentia and orders the animals to begin rebuilding immediately, despite the approaching winter.
Blaming Snowball serves multiple purposes for Napoleon:
Deflects blame: The real cause of the collapse is poor construction — the walls were too thin. By blaming Snowball, Napoleon avoids accountability for his own failures.
Maintains an external enemy: Every totalitarian regime needs an enemy to unite people against. Snowball becomes Animal Farm’s permanent scapegoat.
Justifies increased control: The “threat” of Snowball allows Napoleon to demand greater sacrifices from the animals and punish anyone who questions him as a “Snowball agent.”
Boxer — The Tragic Hero
Boxer is the emotional heart of the novella. He is enormously strong, utterly loyal, and completely trusting. His two slogans — “I will work harder” and “Napoleon is always right” — define his character: he responds to every problem with more effort and more obedience, never with questioning or resistance.
Orwell uses Boxer to represent the proletariat — the working class whose labour sustains the regime but who receive nothing in return. Boxer’s tragedy is that his strength could overthrow Napoleon, but his trust prevents him from ever using it against the pigs.
Boxer wakes an hour before everyone else to work on the windmill. He volunteers for every difficult task. When food rations are reduced, he works even harder. When Squealer distorts history, Boxer accepts it because he trusts Napoleon.
The other animals admire Boxer and take inspiration from his work ethic, but Orwell presents this admiration with deep irony. Boxer’s “I will work harder” is not heroic — it is the response of someone who has been conditioned to accept exploitation as virtue. The harder he works, the more the pigs benefit, and the faster he is used up.
Clover, the maternal mare, watches Boxer with concern but cannot articulate her unease. She represents the animals who sense something is wrong but lack the education or confidence to speak up — another of Orwell’s critiques of how intellectual inequality enables oppression.
Orwell’s Message About Labour and Power
Through the windmill chapters, Orwell shows that the product of labour matters less than who controls it. The animals build the windmill, but the pigs decide what it is used for (eventually, grinding corn to sell for profit, not generating electricity for the animals). This mirrors how Soviet industrial output benefited the state apparatus, not the workers who produced it.