Animal Farm - Quotations about work Flashcards
Mr Jones is shown to be somewhat incompetent at very beginning
“was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes” (1)
Old Major shows why human system of working animals is unfair
“He sets them to work, he gives back to them the / bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest / he keeps for himself” (1)
Old Major shows brutal reality of life under humans, related to work animals do
“our lives are miserable, laborious and short” (1)
Mr Jones and his men do not work well to even run the farm, which harms them in the long run
“of late he / had fallen on evil days… His men were idle and dishonest, the fields were full of weeds, the / buildings wanted roofing, the hedges were neglected and the animals / were underfed” (2)
The animals work to free themselves in the Rebellion
“With one accord, though nothing of / the kind had been planned beforehand, they flung themselves upon / their tormentors” (2)
Snowball encourages the animals to work better in the harvest than Jones and his men did
“Let us make it a point of honour to get in the harvest / more quickly than Jones and his men could do” (2)
The animals work hard, but are truly rewarded for it initially
“How they toiled and sweated to get the hay in! But their efforts were / rewarded, for the harvest was an even bigger success than they had / hoped” (3)
The animals do have leisure time initially
“On Sundays there was no work… the afternoon was given up to recreation” (3)
Snowball does seriously work to organise the other animals and help them improve (largely without success)
“Snowball also busied himself / with organising the other animals into what he called Animal / Committees” (3)
Frederick does work to maintain his farm, but for himself and presumably not animals
“was smaller and better kept. Its owner was a Mr / Frederick, a tough, shrewd man” (4)
All the animals work to defend Animal Farm from Jones’ attack
“The animals had now reassembled in the wildest excitement, / each recounting his own exploits in the battle” (4)
Snowball and Napoleon both work to gain support
“At the Meetings Snowball often won over / the majority by his brilliant speeches, but Napoleon was better at / canvassing support for himself in between times” (5)
Snowball works hard to develop designs for windmill in shed
“He was closeted there for hours at a time… he would move rapidly / to and fro, drawing in line after line” (5)
Squealer presents Napoleon’s seizure of power as him taking on extra work
“I trust that every animal here appreciates / the sacrifice that Comrade Napoleon has made in taking this extra labour upon himself” (5)
After Napoleon takes power, the animals work very hard
“All that year the animals worked like slaves” (6)
Napoleon introduces new work which is “voluntary”, but practically compulsory if the animals want to avoid starving
“This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations / reduced by half” (6)
Boxer’s slogan pushes him to work harder, even if he overstrains himself
“I will work harder” (6)
Squealer claims pigs’ brainwork justifies them getting better treatment than other animals
“You would not have us too tired to / carry out our duties?” (6)
The animals’ hard work on the windmill is undone initially by winds
“Yes, there / it lay, the fruit of all their struggles, levelled to its foundations” (6)
Despite animals’ hard work under Napoleon, they are not rewarded and starve during food shortage
“Starvation / seemed to stare them in the face” (7)
The dogs work for Napoleon and execute his orders during the hens’ rebellion
“The dogs / saw to it that these orders were carried out” (7)
Boxer seemingly believes every problem and bad thing can be solved by working harder, as shown after Napoleon’s executions
“The solution, as I see it, is to work harder” (7)
The animals seem to believe that Napoleon is responsible for good things he has no control over, as if that is the work he does
“Thanks to the leadership of Comrade / Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!” (8)
The animals work hard and finally finished the windmill a second time, before it gets blown up by Frederick
“In the autumn, by a tremendous, exhausting effort - for the / harvest had to be gathered at almost the same time - the windmill was finished” (8)
The animals’ hard work is destroyed, for a second time
“The / windmill had ceased to exist!” (8)
The animals’ work under Napoleon is not rewarded and their lives get worse
“The winter was as cold as the last one / had been, and food was even shorter” (8)
The animals simply live terrible lives and are overworked
“They knew that / life nowadays was harsh and bare, that they were often hungry and / often cold, and that they were usually working when they were not / asleep” (9)
The animals work heavily for the pigs’ benefit, based on what Animal Farm focuses on building
“There were the bricks, sand and lime for the schoolroom / to be purchased” (9)
Because they are not rewarded for their hard work, the animals turn to Moses’ stories for relief to believe there is a better afterlife
“Their lives now, they reasoned, were hungry and laborious; was / it not right and just that a better world should exist somewhere else?” (9)
Overall, the animals’ under Napoleon, like Major said, are given just enough to survive and the rest is taken to enrich the pigs and dogs
“But still, neither pigs nor dogs produced any food by their own labour; and there were very many of them, and their appetites were always good” (10)
The animals’ labour goes towards enriching the pigs and dogs, not themselves
“Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without / making the animals themselves any richer” (10)
