ShmoopTube

00:04

Animal Farm 1.3 Thou Shalt Not Take… a la Shmoop.

00:09

More rules? Yep. Gotta have ’em. Unless you want to take your chances in a lawless dystopia.

00:14

And that might work for some people, but we don’t look that great in a leather jacket.

00:18

So rules it is. Animal Farm has Seven Commandments.

00:23

Who made them? Wasn’t this brand new society of equals not supposed to have rules?

00:28

Oh… right. And after the rules were made, who kept changing them?

00:32

Enter the pigs… Who made the pigs the leaders of Animal Farm?

00:36

Genetics. You see, pigs are known to be very smart.

00:39

And that means they can outthink the other animals.

00:42

They make the rules because they can. The Seven Commandments were just the start.

00:47

But then the pigs made every decision that followed, like running the farm, building

00:51

the windmill, associating with humans, stealing the milk, sleeping in beds, and wearing clothes

00:57

– which required alterations to the Seven Commandments.

01:00

Stealing the milk foreshadowed the pigs’ stealing of the whole revolution.

01:05

Why did the other animals allow this sabotage? Yep, those pesky genetics again.

01:10

They just didn’t have the same smarts as the pigs.

01:13

They might have had uneasy feelings about this or that rule, but since they didn’t

01:17

have the brain power of the pigs, they couldn’t figure out why they had those feelings.

01:22

So they deferred all the leadership of their revolution to the pigs.

01:26

Of course, seeing what Napoleon’s dogs did to anyone who disagreed with him gave the

01:30

animals a huge incentive to be agreeable. Between the pigs’ brains and the dogs’ brawn,

01:35

the rest of the farm animals didn’t stand a chance.

01:38

When Boxer became confused, he repeated his mantra, “Napoleon is always right”.

01:44

It wasn’t that he wouldn’t challenge Napoleon…because – let’s face it - he certainly would have

01:49

won a boxing match with the pig…it was because he couldn’t challenge Napoleon.

01:54

He had the physical ability, but not the mental ability.

01:57

Mollie never got the picture at all.

01:59

Concerned with ribbons and sugar cubes,

02:00

she couldn’t grasp the basic concept that revolution meant no ribbons.

02:05

The sheep were the mindless masses who bleated

02:07

“Four legs good, two legs bad,” whenever it looked like Napoleon’s authority might

02:12

be questioned. They were plants for crowd control.

02:15

So does this mean that all revolutions are doomed to fail? Not necessarily. The American Revolution

02:20

worked out, produced a democratic country with some impressive leaders…

02:23

…like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

02:25

Unfortunately there was pretty much everyone else.

02:28

History has many examples of caring leaders… like Snowball/Trotsky could have been…

02:34

…if it weren’t for that ruthless, power-hungry Napoleon.

02:36

But uh, ….just to be safe…

Full Transcript