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Animal Farm Chapter 7 Summary

  • Since the collapse of the windmill, the animals are starving. Still, they put on a good face for the outside world.
  • The hens find out that their eggs will be taken. When they try to rebel, they're starved (via control of the teeth-baring dogs) and nine die.
  • What was that we said about irony?
  • More scapegoating at Snowball's expense. Boxer seems, amazingly, to remember history the way that it occurred, but Squealer quickly convinces him that his memory is faulty.
  • At a meeting, several animals confess to having been in league with Snowball, or with Jones, or both. (We think the teeth-baring dogs might have had something to do with the confession.)
  • After they confess, Napoleon… has them killed.
  • Uh-oh. This Revolution is going downhill fast.
  • And then, due to Boxer's doubt regarding the new and rewritten history, Napoleon tries (and fails) to have him killed by the dogs.
  • There's a lot of subtlety here—none of the animals, and especially not Boxer, think for a moment that Napoleon actually ordered the attack. On the surface, it just looks like the dogs went rogue and attacked him.
  • But some of the animals have picked up on the fact that things aren't quite working out.
  • Clover looks over the farm and thinks to herself that these scenes of bloody terror are certainly not what the animals have worked so hard for.
  • The final straw? "Beasts of England" is abolished.