Sunday, August 1, 2010

In Animal Farm, when the pigs think Napoleon is dying from drinking alcohol, what is his final dying command?

Towards the end of Chapter VIII in Animal Farm, Napoleon and some of the other pigs get drunk.  They are celebrating what they claim was their great victory in the Battle of the Windmill.  They get drunk even though one of the Seven Commandments was that no animal was allowed to drink alcohol.  The next morning, Napoleon is evidently badly hungover because Squealer announces that he is dying.  When he makes this announcement, he tells the other animals that



As his last act upon earth, Comrade Napoleon had pronounced a solemn decree: the drinking of alcohol was to be punished by death.



So, this is Napoleon’s “final dying command.” 


Orwell has Napoleon give this command to illustrate how his edicts tend to change based on his own whims and needs. When Napoleon thinks he is dying from drinking the alcohol, he bans it on pain of death.  (This order itself shows his capriciousness because, up until the last chapter, one of the commandments was that no animal shall kill another animal.)  But when he recovers from his hangover, he starts to plant rye and to get booklets about how to make alcohol.  At the end of the chapter, we see his hypocrisy and his willingness to rewrite history when the Fifth Commandment is changed from “No animal shall drink alcohol” to “No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.” 

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