Animal Farm

by George Orwell

Chapter IX

Summary

Boxer's split hoof, sustained during the Battle of the Windmill, takes a long time to heal. Despite his injury, he refuses to take even a single day away from the windmill reconstruction. He rises earlier than any other animal and works later into the evening, dragging loads of stone up the quarry slope on willpower alone. The other animals admire his determination, but Clover and Benjamin urge him to take care of his health. Boxer dismisses their concern. He has set his mind on two goals: to see the windmill well underway before he reaches the age of twelve, and to accumulate a good store of stone. Retirement is his private dream. Under the original principles of Animalism, animals were to retire at twelve—horses and pigs at twelve, dogs at nine, cows at fourteen—and receive generous pensions. No animal has yet retired, but the idea sustains Boxer through his pain.

Life on the farm grows harder for all animals except the pigs and dogs. Rations are "readjusted" downward—Squealer's preferred euphemism for "reduced"—yet the pigs and dogs continue to eat well. Squealer produces endless columns of figures demonstrating that production has increased in every category: oats, hay, turnips. The animals, who cannot remember what conditions were like before the Rebellion, have no basis for comparison. They suspect they are hungrier than they were under Jones, but the statistics say otherwise, and the statistics are read aloud every Sunday morning.

Thirty-one young pigs are born that spring, all sired by Napoleon. He orders a schoolroom to be built for their education and personally oversees their instruction. The young pigs are discouraged from playing with the other animals' young. A new rule is introduced: when a pig and any other animal meet on a path, the other animal must step aside. All pigs, regardless of rank, now enjoy the privilege of wearing green ribbons on their tails on Sundays. The farm has a successful year in some respects—two fields are sown with barley, and it is rumored that every pig will receive a daily ration of beer. A brewery is set up in the farmhouse kitchen.

The farm is proclaimed a Republic, and an election is held for President. There is only one candidate—Napoleon—who is elected unanimously. On the same day, new evidence is said to have been discovered regarding Snowball's collaboration with Jones. It is now revealed that Snowball did not merely attempt to betray the animals at the Battle of the Cowshed, as previously claimed, but that he openly fought on Jones's side, charging into battle with the words "Long live Humanity!" on his lips. The wound on his back, which the animals had always believed was inflicted by Jones's gun, was in fact made by Napoleon's own teeth.

Around this time, Moses the raven reappears on the farm after an absence of several years. He is entirely unchanged. He still does no work and still speaks, with the same fervent conviction, about Sugarcandy Mountain—the paradise beyond the clouds where all animals go when they die. There, it is Sunday seven days a week, clover is in season the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grow on the hedges. Many of the animals believe him, reasoning that their present lives are so miserable that another world must surely exist somewhere. The pigs declare contemptuously that Moses's stories are lies, yet they allow him to remain on the farm and even give him a daily gill of beer.

Boxer's lung gives out in midsummer. He is dragging a load of stone to the windmill when he staggers, falls to his knees, and cannot rise. Blood trickles from his mouth. The animals rush to his side. Boxer manages to whisper that his lung has gone and that he does not think he can go on. Clover and Benjamin stay with him. Squealer arrives, expressing Napoleon's deep concern, and announces that Napoleon has arranged for Boxer to be treated at the veterinary hospital in Willingdon.

Two days later, a van arrives to take Boxer away. The animals gather to say goodbye. Benjamin, who rarely shows emotion, suddenly becomes agitated. For the first and only time in the novel, he breaks into a run, braying at the top of his lungs. He calls the animals to come quickly and read the writing on the side of the van. The lettering reads: "Alfred Simmonds, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willingdon. Dealer in Hides and Bone-Meal." The animals cry out in horror, begging Boxer to get out. Boxer hears them and tries to kick his way free, but his strength has left him. The van picks up speed and carries him away. He is never seen again.

Three days later, Squealer addresses the farm. He claims that Boxer died peacefully in the hospital at Willingdon, praising the excellent care he received. The van, Squealer explains, had previously belonged to a horse slaughterer but was purchased by the veterinary surgeon, who had simply not yet repainted it. The animals are enormously relieved to hear this explanation. Napoleon himself delivers a brief speech in Boxer's honor, urging the animals to adopt Boxer's two maxims—"I will work harder" and "Comrade Napoleon is always right"—as their own.

Shortly afterward, the farmhouse receives a large wooden crate from the grocer in Willingdon. That night, the sounds of raucous singing emanate from the farmhouse, and the next day a rumor spreads that the pigs have somehow acquired the money to buy themselves a case of whisky. No explanation is ever offered for where the money came from.

Character Development

Boxer reaches the end of his arc in this chapter, and his fate is the novel's most devastating episode. His unshakeable faith in Napoleon and his willingness to work past the point of physical collapse make him a tragic figure: the ideal citizen of a corrupt state, whose loyalty is repaid with betrayal. His whispered words after his collapse—that his lung has gone—mark the only moment in the novel where Boxer's relentless optimism falters, and it is too late for self-knowledge to save him.

Benjamin undergoes his most significant transformation. The cynical donkey who has always refused to act on his intelligence finally breaks into a desperate run, reading the van's lettering aloud in an anguished attempt to save his closest friend. His outburst arrives too late, and it crystallizes one of Orwell's sharpest indictments: passive wisdom is no better than active ignorance when it comes too late to prevent injustice.

Squealer delivers what is perhaps his most audacious lie, explaining away the horse slaughterer's van with a story so transparently false that it succeeds only because the animals need it to be true. His performance demonstrates the final stage of propaganda: when the audience becomes complicit in its own deception.

Themes and Motifs

The betrayal of the faithful is the chapter's central theme. Boxer has given everything—his strength, his health, his blind loyalty—and receives only exploitation in return. Orwell draws a direct parallel to the Soviet Union's treatment of its working class, whose labor built the state and whose suffering was rewarded with empty slogans and broken promises. The pigs' purchase of whisky with the proceeds of Boxer's sale to the knacker is the novel's most damning image of ruling-class parasitism.

Religion as social control appears through Moses the raven and his tales of Sugarcandy Mountain. The pigs publicly deny his stories but privately tolerate—and even subsidize—his presence, recognizing that the promise of an afterlife pacifies animals who might otherwise rebel against present misery. This mirrors the Soviet regime's complex relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church: officially atheist, yet willing to permit religion when it served the function of social quietism.

The manipulation of memory continues with the latest revision of Snowball's history. The narrative of Snowball's treachery has now expanded to the point of absurdity—he was not merely a traitor but an open enemy who fought alongside Jones. Each revision stretches credulity further, yet the animals accept each new version because they can no longer distinguish what they witnessed from what they have been told.

Notable Passages

When Benjamin reads the side of the van carrying Boxer away, the moment represents the shattering of his lifelong passivity:

"Alfred Simmonds, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willingdon. Dealer in Hides and Bone-Meal. Do you not understand what that means? They are taking Boxer to the knacker's!"

This is the only time in the novel that Benjamin uses his literacy to intervene in events. The tragedy lies in the futility: he has always been capable of seeing through the pigs' lies, but his refusal to speak until this moment means his intelligence serves only to confirm a horror he is powerless to prevent.

Squealer's explanation of the van encapsulates the regime's approach to inconvenient truths:

"The van had previously been the property of the knacker, and had been bought by the veterinary surgeon, who had not yet painted the old name out."

The explanation is absurd on its face, yet the animals accept it because the alternative—that their leaders sold a dying comrade for whisky money—is too terrible to contemplate. Orwell shows that the most effective lies are those that offer emotional refuge from unbearable realities.

Napoleon's eulogy for Boxer reveals the regime's final appropriation of its victim:

"He had made it his final wish, said Squealer, that 'Forward, Comrades! ... Forward in the name of the Rebellion. Long live Animal Farm! Long live Comrade Napoleon! Napoleon is always right.' Those were his very last words, comrades."

The fabricated deathbed scene transforms Boxer from a living being into a propaganda tool. Even in death, he is made to serve the regime, his memory conscripted into endorsing the very system that destroyed him.

Analysis

Chapter IX is the emotional climax of Animal Farm, and Orwell constructs it with devastating precision. The chapter's power derives from the gap between what the reader understands and what the animals are willing to accept. Every reader recognizes that Boxer is being sent to the knacker; every reader sees through Squealer's explanation of the van. The horror is not in the deception itself but in the animals' acceptance of it—their willingness to believe because belief is less painful than knowledge.

Orwell employs dramatic irony as his primary literary weapon. The reader watches Boxer's doom approach with the inevitability of a closing trap: his injured hoof, his failing lung, Napoleon's "concern," the van with its damning inscription. Each element is visible from far off, yet none of the animals—except Benjamin, too late—assembles the pieces. This structure mirrors the experience of watching a totalitarian state consume its citizens: the pattern is visible, but the victims cannot or will not see it.

The allegorical dimension operates on multiple levels. Boxer's fate represents the Soviet working class, ground down by Five-Year Plans and discarded when no longer productive. Moses the raven allegorizes organized religion, tolerated by a nominally atheist regime because otherworldly hope suppresses this-worldly resistance. The sham election—one candidate, unanimous result—mirrors Soviet electoral practice with surgical precision.

Structurally, Orwell builds the chapter around a series of contrasts and juxtapositions. Boxer's selfless labor is set against the pigs' expanding privileges. The animals' hunger is set against Squealer's rising statistics. The promise of retirement is set against the reality of the knacker's van. And the chapter's final detail—the case of whisky delivered to the farmhouse the night after Boxer's departure—requires no commentary. The connection between the van and the crate is left for the reader to draw, and the silence is more damning than any accusation Orwell could have written.