Chapters 4-6: Napoleon's Rise
The Power Struggle: Snowball vs Napoleon
After the Rebellion, two pigs emerge as leaders: Snowball and Napoleon. They disagree on virtually everything. Snowball is energetic, eloquent and full of ideas — he organises committees, tries to teach the animals to read, and draws up plans for a windmill that will bring electricity to the farm and reduce the animals’ working hours. Napoleon, by contrast, says little in public debates but works behind the scenes, quietly building his own power base.
Snowball represents Leon Trotsky: an intellectual, a brilliant speaker, and a genuine believer in spreading revolution. Napoleon represents Joseph Stalin: quiet, calculating, and focused on consolidating personal power rather than advancing revolutionary ideals.
The windmill debate is the key conflict. Snowball argues passionately that the windmill will transform the animals’ lives. Napoleon opposes it — not because he has a better plan, but because he cannot allow Snowball to gain popularity. This mirrors the real disagreement between Stalin and Trotsky over industrialisation, but Orwell shows that for Napoleon, the debate is really about power, not policy.
The Expulsion of Snowball
Napoleon’s masterstroke comes at the crucial meeting about the windmill. Just as Snowball is delivering his most persuasive speech, Napoleon gives a “high-pitched whimper” and nine enormous dogs — the puppies he secretly took from their mothers and raised in isolation — burst into the barn and chase Snowball from the farm. This is one of the novella’s most shocking moments. Violence, not argument, decides the power struggle.
The nine dogs represent Stalin’s secret police (the NKVD, later the KGB). Napoleon takes them as puppies and raises them “in a loft” away from the other animals, training them to be loyal only to him. This detail is crucial: Napoleon plans his violent seizure of power long before the windmill debate. The dogs enforce Napoleon’s will through fear, just as Stalin used the secret police to silence, imprison and execute opponents. After Snowball’s expulsion, the dogs keep close to Napoleon, and “they wagged their tails to him in the same way as the other dogs had been used to do to Mr Jones” — a devastating detail showing that Napoleon has simply replaced one form of tyranny with another.
Squealer: The Voice of Propaganda
Squealer is Napoleon’s most important tool. Described as a pig who “could turn black into white,” Squealer represents the Soviet propaganda machine, particularly the state newspaper Pravda (which, ironically, means ‘truth’). After every new injustice, Squealer appears with “explanations” that twist reality. When the pigs take the milk and apples, Squealer claims it is for the animals’ benefit: “Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back!”
Squealer uses several propaganda techniques: false statistics (“the production of every class of foodstuff had increased by two hundred per cent”), appeals to fear (the threat of Jones’s return), rewriting history (claiming Snowball was always a traitor), and exploiting the animals’ inability to read or remember. Orwell shows that propaganda works not because it is believable, but because those in power control all sources of information.
After Snowball’s expulsion, Boxer adopts the personal motto “Napoleon is always right” alongside his existing “I will work harder.” This is one of the novella’s most poignant moments. Boxer is loyal, hardworking and trusting — exactly the qualities that make him vulnerable to exploitation. His blind faith in Napoleon represents how ordinary Soviet citizens accepted Stalin’s authority, partly out of genuine belief and partly because questioning the leader was dangerous. Orwell makes Boxer sympathetic precisely so the reader feels the injustice of his exploitation.
Rewriting History
One of Napoleon’s most insidious tactics is the systematic rewriting of the past. After Snowball’s expulsion, Squealer gradually transforms Snowball from a hero of the Rebellion into a traitor who was “Jones’s secret agent all the time.” The animals’ memories of Snowball’s bravery at the Battle of the Cowshed are replaced with a new version where Napoleon was the real hero and Snowball had actually been fighting on Jones’s side. This mirrors how Stalin had Trotsky’s image literally erased from photographs and official records. In the Soviet Union, history was not a fixed record but a tool of power — whoever controlled the narrative controlled the truth. Orwell shows that when citizens cannot verify facts for themselves, they become prisoners of whatever story those in power choose to tell.
The Windmill: Promise and Exploitation
In a typically cynical move, Napoleon reverses his position on the windmill after expelling Snowball. He announces that the windmill will be built after all — and claims it was his idea all along. Squealer explains that Napoleon only seemed to oppose it as a “manoeuvre” to get rid of Snowball. The windmill represents Soviet industrialisation under Stalin’s Five-Year Plans — ambitious projects that promised a better future but were built on the brutal exploitation of workers. The animals labour exhaustingly to build the windmill, but the pigs do none of the physical work.