Animal Farm Pilkington Summaru

The owner of Foxwood, a neighboring farm in "disgraceful" condition, Pilkington becomes an ally to Napoleon. This alliance, however, has a rocky start, when Napoleon changes the pigeons' message of "Death to Jones; Frederick" to "Death to Pilkington" and Pilkington refuses to help when the farm is attacked by Frederick. However, Napoleon and Pilkington eventually reconcile since they are, in essence, made of the same moral fiber and need each other to prosper (as seen when Pilkington sells part of his land to Napoleon). In the novel's last scene, Pilkington praises what Napoleon has done with Animal Farm, getting more work out of the animals with less food and likening the "lower animals" to humanity's "lower classes." The final moments of the novel, when Pilkington and Napoleon each attempt to cheat the other at cards, shows that their "friendship" is simply a facade each is using in order to better swindle the other.

MOSES

With his tales of the "promised land" to which all animals retire after death, Moses is the novel's "religious" figure. Like his biblical counterpart, Moses offers his listeners descriptions of a place — Sugarcandy Mountain — where they can live free from oppression and hunger. At first, the pigs find him irksome, since they want the animals to believe that Animal Farm is a paradise and fear that the animals will be prompted by Moses' tales to seek a better place. However, as conditions on the farm worsen, the pigs allow Moses to stay because his tales offer the animals the promise of rest after a weary, toilsome life. As Karl Marx famously stated, "Religion is the opium of the people," and Moses' tales of Sugarcandy Mountain likewise serve as an opiate to the animals' misery.

JONES

Like George III to the American colonists or Czar Nicholas II to the Russian revolutionaries, Jones is the embodiment of the tyranny against which the animals rebel — and with good reason. An inept farmer and slovenly drunkard, Jones cares little for his Manor Farm and the animals who live there. The novel's first paragraph describes Jones forgetting (out of drunkenness) to shut the popholes for the hen-houses but remembering to draw himself a glass of beer before "lumbering" off to a drunken sleep. The fact that the rebellion is sparked by Jones' forgetting to feed the animals adds to the overall impression of him as an uncaring master. For the remainder of the novel, he is portrayed as an impotent has-been, unable to reclaim his own farm and idling in a pub until his eventual death in an inebriates' home.

Long after Jones has been driven from the farm, the pigs invoke his name to scare the other animals into submission. Squealer's question, "Surely, comrades, you do not want Jones back?" elicits a knee-jerk reaction in the animals, who fail to realize that the spirit of Jones has returned, despite the farmer's physical absence.

FREDERICK

The crafty owner of Pinchfield, a neighboring farm, Frederick is "perpetually involved in lawsuits" and reveals himself to be a cutthroat businessman. Despite his offers of sympathy to Jones about the rebellion at his farm, Frederick inwardly hopes that he can "somehow turn Jones' misfortune to his own advantage." He attempts this by offering to buy a load of timber from Napoleon but paying for it with counterfeit notes. His subsequent attempt to take Animal Farm by force reveals him to be a man who always takes what he wants — in short, exactly the kind of man against which the animals initially wanted to rebel. By the novel's end, however, Napoleon has proven himself to be more greedy and double-dealing than Frederick at his worst.

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