Foil

Snowball and Napoleon

We’re breaking the rules slightly in that we see a foil in the antagonists, not the protagonists. Talk to Orwell if this bothers you, but what we’re looking at here is our two favorite power-usurping pigs. Snowball presents a nice contrast to Napoleon; in examining how they are different, we can learn things about each of their characters. Snowball, for example, is adamant about planning for the future of Animal Farm. He tries to form animal committees, to build new technology, and to take votes in order to get input from the other creatures. All of these traits highlight something about Napoleon: he doesn’t have any of them. Napoleon is strictly self-serving, Machiavellian to the last hair (yes, pigs have hair, we checked), violent, and apparently uninterested in the welfare of the other animals.