Animal Farm: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Every animal, down to the ducks and the hens, works hard to bring the hay in. The pigs are clever enough to figure out how to do this without tools that involve standing on two legs, while Boxer and Clover know the intricacies of bringing hay in. Because the pigs are so intelligent, they don’t actually work and instead assume leadership positions. It takes the animals less than time than it ever did Mr. Jones to bring in the hay, and the harvest is bigger than it’s ever been. Throughout the summer, things work perfectly. The animals are thrilled to eat food that they produced for themselves and not have to share it with humans.

Some things prove difficult, such as threshing the corn without a threshing machine, but the pigs are clever enough to figure it out and Boxer is strong enough to pull them through. Everyone admires Boxer, as he seems as strong as three horses and even gets up 30 minutes earlier than everyone else to labor where he’s needed most. His motto becomes, “I will work harder!” All the animals work as hard as they can, save for Mollie and the cat. Mollie struggles to rise in the morning and often leaves work early because of stones in her hooves, while the cat disappears during work time and shows up for meals with excellent excuses. Benjamin seems unchanged since the rebellion. He cryptically repeats that donkeys live a long time and that no one else has seen a dead donkey when asked if life is better without Mr. Jones.

On Animal Farm, there’s no work on Sundays. After a late breakfast, the animals hoist a flag that Snowball painted with a white hoof and horn on a green field. The animals then attend a meeting in the big barn, where they discuss the work for the week ahead and put forth resolutions for debate. The pigs are the only ones who propose resolutions and Napoleon and Snowball are the most active debaters. However, they never seem to be able to agree on anything. The meeting ends with a round of “Beasts of England.”

The pigs adopt the harness room as their headquarters and study books from the farmhouse in the evenings. Snowball organizes committees such as the Egg Production Committee for the hens and the Whiter Wool Movement for the sheep, but these projects fail. His only success is with the reading and writing classes—every animal is somewhat literate by fall. The dogs learn to read well, but only read the Seven Commandments. Muriel learns to read and reads newspapers out loud, while Benjamin is completely literate but refuses to read. Clover learns the whole alphabet but cannot read words, while Boxer learns the first four letters and nothing more. Mollie, meanwhile, learns only to spell her name.

The less intelligent animals, such as the sheep, learn only the letter A and struggle to memorize the Seven Commandments. Snowball reduces them to the maxim “Four legs good, two legs bad.” At first, this goes over poorly with the birds, who have only two legs, but Snowball explains to them that what makes humans evil is their hands—and birds don’t have hands. Everyone else also learns the maxim and the sheep take to repeating it for hours on end.

Napoleon takes an interest in the nine puppies born to the dogs, which arrive soon after the hay harvest. He takes them to educate himself, believing that it’s more important to educate the young than teach everyone else to read. The other animals soon forget about the puppies, but they do discover that the missing milk ends up in the pigs’ mash. The pigs insist that they should get all the fallen apples, which the other animals assumed would be divided evenly. Squealer makes the case that the pigs are “brainworkers” and therefore need the milk and apples in order to care for everyone else—if they don’t get them, Mr. Jones will come back. The animals see his point and say nothing when the main crop of apples also goes to the pigs.