Grade 9: Animal Farm

ANIMAL FARM – CONTEXTUAL QUESTION

Read the extracts below and then answer the questions that follow.

EXTRACT A

All through that summer the work of the farm went like clockwork. The animals were happy as they had never conceived it possible to be. Every mouthful of food was an acute positive pleasure, now that it was truly their own food, produced by themselves and for themselves, not doled out to them by a grudging master. With the worthless parasitical human beings gone, there was more for everyone to eat. There was more leisure, too, inexperienced though the animals were. They met with many difficulties – for instance, later in the year, when they harvested the corn, they had to tread it out in the ancient style and blow away the chaff with their breath, since the farm possessed no threshing machine – but the pigs with their cleverness and Boxer with his tremendous muscles always pulled them through. Boxer was the admiration of everybody. He had been a hard worker even in Jones's time, but now he seemed more like three horses than one; there were days when the entire work of the farm seemed to rest upon his mighty shoulders. From morning to night he was pushing and pulling, always at the spot where the work was hardest.

                                                                                                                                 [Chapter 3]

1.1 Describe what has led to the situation described in the extract above.                                   (2)

1.2 Discuss how life is different for the animals on Animal Farm now, as opposed

    to when Jones was in charge.                                                                                                 (2)                                                                                                                                                            

1.3 What comment is the writer making about society through the pigs 

      Management of Animal Farm?                                                                                                (3)

1.4 Discuss the irony of Boxer's commitment to Animal Farm.                                                     (3)

                                                                   AND

EXTRACT B

A few days later, when the terror caused by the executions had died down, some of the animals remembered ─ or thought they remembered ─ that the Sixth Commandment decreed: 'No animal shall kill any other animal.' And though no one cared to mention it in the hearing of the pigs or the dogs, it was felt that the killings which had taken place did not square with this. Clover asked Benjamin to read her the Sixth Commandment, and when Benjamin, as usual, said that he refused to meddle in such matters, she fetched Muriel. Muriel read the Commandment for her. It ran: 'No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.' Somehow or other, the last two words had slipped out of the animals' memory. But they saw now that the commandment had not been violated; for clearly there was good reason for killing the traitors who had leagued themselves

with Snowball.

Throughout that year the animals worked even harder than they had worked in the

previous year. To rebuild the windmill, with walls twice as thick as before, and to finish it by the appointed date, together with the regular work of the farm, was a tremendous labour. There were times when it seemed to the animals that they worked longer hours and fed no better than they had done in Jones's day.

                                                                                                                                      [Chapter 8]

1.5 Comment critically on the inclusion of Benjamin in this novel.                                                  (3)

1.6 Discuss to what extent the animals themselves are responsible for the loss

      of the ideals of Animalism.                                                                                                     (3)

1.7 Refer to lines 9–11: 'But they saw … themselves with Snowball'.

     In your view, are the animals justified in treating those who supported

     Snowball as traitors? Motivate your response.                                                              (2)                              

1.8 Discuss the importance of the windmill as a symbol in Animal Farm.                                   (3)

1.9 The ending of the novel may be interpreted as a comment on revolutions and

    revolutionaries. Do you agree? Justify your response.                                                               (4)

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