Question

Compare how Mr. Jones and Napoleon ruled the animals in Animal Farm.

Accepted Answer

Mr. Jones ruled the farm in the same way for as long as he was in charge, essentially regarding the animals as machines to produce an income for him. Napoleon begins as one of the animals, which means he has to separate himself from the others in order to rule. His rule changes over the course of the book and is principally based on frightening the animals with violence and manipulating them with propaganda.

Answer

The principal contrast between Mr. Jones's rule of the farm and Napoleon's is that the former is static and the latter dynamic. This is true both as a matter of presentation and as a matter of fact, though the reader is given to understand at the end of the book that Napoleon's rule will not change much more.
Mr. Jones's rule is presented only as a snapshot at the very beginning of the book, then in various scattered references. These suggest that Mr. Jones was not a particularly cruel master, and treated some of the animals, such as Mollie the Mare and Moses the Raven, as pets. Most, however, are simply machines for producing milk, eggs. and meat, or for laboring. Mr. Jones has no interest in the psychology of the animals. He probably does not imagine that they think at all.
Whereas Mr. Jones's rule was unchanging and mechanistic, not particularly cruel but essentially heartless, Napoleon's methods of control are always changing. Mr. Jones would have begun his career as a farmer thinking of himself as completely different from the animals, rather as Tsar Nicholas II saw himself as the representative of God on earth, a different species from the Russian peasantry. Napoleon begins the book as one of the animals, just as Stalin was one of the people. Throughout the book, the pigs are gradually separated from the other animals, and Napoleon from the other pigs, to create a difference of caste that was natural and inevitable for Mr. Jones.
Because Napoleon is one of the animals, he constantly has to justify his rule in a way that Jones never did. He accomplishes this through two main methods: violence and propaganda. The violence is there from the beginning: Napoleon uses the dogs to get rid of his rival, Snowball, but it becomes more extreme throughout the book as Napoleon uses more vicious methods to crush dissent. Jones would never have thought of doing this, since he had no idea that dissent was possible until it was too late. He would also never have considered persuading the animals of the legitimacy of his rule, as Napoleon does, with propaganda, which becomes ever more detached from reality.

Answer

As the other educators have noted, Mr. Jones and Napoleon both ruled the animals using a combination of violence and oppression.
Remember that the character of Mr. Jones is a representation of Tsar Nicholas II. Like the tsar, Mr. Jones is not a malicious dictator. The rebellion to oust him from the farm, for example, is caused by Mr. Jones’s forgetfulness. Instead of feeding the animals as he ought to, he forgets because he has spent all day drinking alcohol. Similarly, the people considered Tsar Nicholas to be an inept leader, out of touch with the needs of his people.
In contrast, Napoleon is a representation of Joseph Stalin. Like Stalin, Napoleon is power-hungry and determined to rule absolutely. The show trials in Chapter Seven, for instance, show that unlike Jones, Napoleon was an active oppressor of the animals, determined to root out any hint of discontent on the farm. This event mirrors what happened in Russia in the 1930s.
Through his depictions of the rule of Mr. Jones and then of Napoleon, Orwell makes an important point about how the people of the Soviet Union were treated. Specifically, he shows that the people thought they would get a better deal after the overthrow of Nicholas II, but, in reality, Stalin’s rule brought more misery and oppression than ever thought possible. These feelings are echoed by the animals at the end of the story and adds a strong sense of irony.

Answer

Mr. Jones treated his animals with neglect. He wasn't actively cruel towards them, just indifferent. He saw them, in the time-honored rural fashion, as objects to be exploited rather than as sentient beings to be valued for themselves. At no point did Mr. Jones ever think that the animals on his farm had anything vaguely resembling rights.
Angered and resentful at their exploitation, the animals rise up and throw off the shackles of Mr. Jones's oppression, hoping to establish in its stead an Animalist utopia in which animals, not humans, will be firmly in charge. Unfortunately, the new regime proves to be even more oppressive than anything Mr. Jones could've devised.
Despite presenting himself as the animals' savior, and despite being an animal himself, Napoleon proceeds to subject the other animals to a brutal dictatorship in which terror is the main order of the day. What makes Napoleon's regime so much worse than Mr. Jones's is that it's based on ideological zeal. Mr. Jones treated his animals the way he did because he didn't really know any better; this was just the way things had always been.
But Napoleon, who's supposed to have imbibed the emancipatory teachings of Old Major, has no such excuse. He cynically distorts Animalism for his own benefit, systematically terrorizing and exploiting the animals to maintain his iron grip on power. Napoleon's cruelty is so much more efficient—and therefore more effective—because he is an unregenerate control freak, whereas Mr. Jones would much rather spend his free time getting drunk, even if it meant letting the farm go to wrack and ruin.

Answer

Mr. Jones and Napoleon share several similarities in their approach to ruling the animals on the farm. Both Mr. Jones and Napoleon distance themselves from the animals and enjoy an elevated status on the farm. Mr. Jones and Napoleon also enjoy the luxury of not working arduous hours on the farm while they make the other animals do all of the hard labor. Mr. Jones and Napoleon also prevent the animals from enjoying their lives and completely eradicate leisure time from the animals' busy schedules. Mr. Jones and Napoleon are also privileged enough to stay in the comfortable farmhouse, where they sleep on mattresses and indulge in alcohol. While Mr. Jones and Napoleon reap the benefits of the animals' hard work, the animals starve to death and suffer from exhaustion. The conditions on the farm rapidly deteriorate under the leadership of both Mr. Jones and Napoleon, who rule as tyrants.
While the animals resent Mr. Jones's authority and eventually rebel against him, they fear Napoleon, who unscrupulously murders those who disagree with his political agenda by holding public executions. Napoleon also relies on propaganda and fear to control the animals and utilizes Squealer to manipulate the animals into supporting his self-centered decisions. The most evident similarity between Mr. Jones and Napoleon is their selfish nature. Both characters dismiss the feelings of the animals on the farm in order to benefit themselves. Essentially, Mr. Jones and Napoleon force the animals into working long hours while they sell everything the farm produces and keep the profit without sharing the wealth.

Animal Farm Questions and Answers
by George Orwell

Compare how Mr. Jones and Napoleon ruled the animals in Animal Farm.

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