world, Napoleon tricks Whymper on his weekly visits to the farm into believing the farm is prospering. In Whymper’s hearing, the sheep talk about an increase in their rations. Empty food bins are filled with sand and topped with meal to give him the impression that there is an abundance of food."

Napoleon also has 4 pigs "confess" to the animals that they had been involved with Snowball in secret.  As soon as the pigs "confess" the dogs tear out their throats.  Then chickens "confess" and they are also killed.  After all the confessions and all the animals who had confessed had been executed, no one questioned Napoleon.  Boxer decided he just needed "to work harder," and Clover felt that this was not what they hoped to accomplish when the rebellion began, but she did not think of rebelling.  The animals mournfully sang "Beast of England," but Napoleon told Squealer to tell all the animals that the rebellion had ended, and the song was not allowed to be sung again.  In its place a new song was quoted. 

Napoleon hand raises a group of puppies into fierce, violent dogs that guard him and do his bidding. He uses them to consolidate and enforce his power. He first instructs them to chase Snowball from Animal Farm:

At this there was a terrible baying sound outside, and nine enormous dogs wearing brass-studded collars came bounding into the barn. They dashed straight for Snowball, who only sprang from his place just in time to escape their snapping jaws.

They pursue Snowball across the farm and almost catch him. He escapes but dares not return, so Napoleon is able to become all powerful. Snowball, Napoleon's only real rival, is intelligent, dedicated and resourceful, but no match for Napoleon's willingness to employ raw force.

When the hens protest having to lay 400 eggs a week, Napoleon cuts off their food supply and decrees any animal giving them so much as a grain of corn should be put to death. This threat of violence works and the hens eventually capitulate.

Napoleon also uses the violence in his show trials. He has the three hens who were the ringleaders in protesting the increased egg quota confess that they were incited by Snowball in a dream to disobey Napoleon's orders. Napoleon has the three hens, "slaughtered," along with some other animals who also confess to having been led astray by Snowball. This demoralizes and frightens the rest of the animals, who creep off, "shaken and miserable." 

Napoleon routinely abuses his power. He abuses his power soon after the revolution when he acquires the best goods for himself and a few of his cronies even though he did little at the Battle of the Cowshed. Napoleon also walks on his hind legs, wears clothes, drinks alcohol, and sleeps in a bed. All of these things are done thanks to Napoleon rewriting the rules as he sees fit.

Napoleon also abuses his power in more sinister ways. He and his cronies carry whips in order to beat the animals that do not work hard enough. Napoleon trains Bluebell's puppies to be his own secret police. Napoleon stages show trials in order to keep the animals in constant fear. This blatantly breaks commandments that forbid killing other animals. Whenever other animals question Napoleon's motives, he reads them his version of the commandments. Napoleon also uses Snowball as a boogeyman whenever he needs to blame the farm's failure on something.

Napoleon also turns against his most faithful followers. Boxer, the workhorse, works himself to death creating the windmill. When Boxer is unable to work, he is sold to the knacker and turned into glue. Napoleon then lies about Boxer's fate by saying that he was taken to a retirement home. Napoleon is able to use propaganda in order to calm the animals; those who cannot be calmed are intimidated by Bluebell's puppies. Napoleon abuses his power by rewriting the history and purposes of the revolution to meet his own selfish ends. By the end of the book, the few animals that remember life under the previous regime do not think their lives are any better.

Napoleon puts near impossible demands on the animals of the farm. At first the animals agree because it's for the good of the farm. They also agree to the heavy work loads because they feel a need to prove themselves to the humans and they don't want to fail in building the windmill because the humans are watching and waiting for the project to fail. Once things begin to get completed around the farm Napoleon finds new reasons that the animals need to be working rather than resting. The pigs are constantly eating and Napoleon is breeding which increases the amount of pigs eating and not working and so production amounts suffer. The animals get less food, but Napoleon, through the use of the ever-convincing Squealer, makes the animals believe that conditions are still better than when Jones was in power and that the commandments have always been in favor of the pigs' behavior. Napoleon's only goals are to make sure the pigs are well taken care of so living conditions worsen for the other animals because no resources are used to make sure they are taken care of. By the time the animals finally realize that they are living terrible lives, they have already given too much power to Napoleon and the pigs to do anything but grin and bear it all.

The animals undertook the revolution in the first place to improve their lives. They were exploited and brutalized under Jones and the humans, and they thought that by controlling their own lives, they could make them better. At first this was the case. But as the book develops, Orwell shows how as Napoleon gradually arrogates more power and privilege to himself and the other pigs, the other animals on the farm return to a situation that seems as bad, or even worse than the one they rebelled to change in the first place:

They were generally hungry, they slept on straw, they drank from the pool, they laboured in the fields; in winter they were troubled by the cold, and in summer by the flies. Sometimes the older ones...tried to determine whether in the early days of the Rebellion, when Jones’s expulsion was still recent, things had been better or worse than now. They could not remember.

So by the end of the book, the animals face grueling labor, very strict food rations, and brutal punishments. Despite failing to deliver on the promises of Animalism, Napoleon is able to maintain power through a combination of fear and information control. Through Squealer, he cultivates a cult of personality for himself, embodied by Boxer's mantra that "Napoleon is always right." He creates a constant sense of emergency by always claiming that Snowball is attempting to destroy the farm in league with the humans. Perhaps as important, he develops friendships with humans on other farms. The animals' oppression, and Napoleon's corruption, are complete by the end of the book, when the animals witness a poker game between the pigs and humans from an adjoining farm:

No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Napoleon's actions are a systematic and insidious method of, firstly, claiming and establishing greater privileges and authority for the pigs and, secondly, using such authority to exert power and control over the other animals. It is a gradual process of propaganda in which the animals are consistently made to realize, and later accept, that the pigs are better than them and therefore have the right to claim these privileges and exert their influence.

The process begins with simple enough changes to the commandments such as altering "No animal shall sleep in a bed" to "No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets." When the animals need an explanation, it is quite easy for Snowball to clarify the necessity for the pigs to sleep well. They are the brain workers, and if they don't get adequate rest, they will not be able to perform their tasks well. If they cannot do their work properly, Jones will come back, and, clearly, no one wants that to happen.

The process is repeated whenever a commandment is altered. Initially, the general animal public is not much affected by the changes in a direct sense. It is merely a matter of the pigs being more privileged than they are. Since the animals are of limited intellect and cannot remember the original commandments, it becomes easy to accept the changes. The animals are, however, deeply shocked and dismayed when, in chapter 7, Napoleon uses his vicious dogs to slaughter those he believes have been consorting with the so-called traitor Snowball and were betraying the cause.

By this time, so many of the commandments have been changed, and the pigs have assumed so much authority, that their supervision and control is unquestionable. In this instance, though, many of the animals remember that the sixth commandment states that "No animal shall kill any other animal." When Clover asks Muriel to read the commandment to her, it mentions: "No animal shall kill any other animal without cause." This is enough to convince the animals that the rule has not been broken, because they cannot remember that the last two words weren't always part of the commandment.

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.

It is at this stage that Napoleon assumes even greater power and control. He is referred to as "our Leader, Comrade Napoleon" and given titles such as "Father of All Animals, Terror of Mankind, Protector of the Sheep-fold, Ducklings’ Friend, and the like." He is given credit for everything good that happens on the farm and is praised for his generosity. He has achieved the status of a demi-god when he has, in fact, become a dictator.

The pigs continue to exercise human habits, something Old Major warned against, and when they use money from the sale of timber to buy alcohol, the fifth commandment is adjusted from "No animal shall drink alcohol" to "No animal shall drink alcohol to excess." Once again, the animals seem to have forgotten the last two words. 

In the final chapter, the pigs' total dominance achieves its apex. They start walking on their hind legs. Napoleon appears walking majestically upright, carrying a whip in his right trotter. The animals want to protest, but the sheep start repeatedly bleating, "Four legs good, two legs BETTER!" Finally, to prove that their subjugation and the process of domination by the pigs is complete, all the commandments are replaced by a single, paradoxical rule which reads:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

In contrast to Mr. Jones, the farmer evicted from his farm as a result of the conspiracy among the animals to eliminate human dominance in favor of a collective effort in which equality would reign supreme, the pigs who lead the rebellion disguise their newly-imposed dictatorship as a means to an end wherein all would benefit. George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a political allegory intended to depict the usurpation by the pigs of all authority over the other animals in direct contravention of the stated principles behind the establishment of Animal Farm.

Early in Orwell’s novel, Major, “the prize Middle White boar," assembles the rest of the farm animals so that he can convey his thoughts about the need for a revolution to overthrow Jones, who, he argues, exploits the animals for his own profit:

“Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. . . Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever.”

The produce of the animals’ labor, Major exhorts, “would be our own” following the removal of their human master.

The revolution, of course, is successful. Mr. Jones has been forcibly evicted from his farm and the animals are now free to establish a collective governed by a set of principles regarding equality, what Orwell called “the Seven Commandments.” Orwell’s theme, however, is about how a small cabal of dedicated and clever autocrats have merely replaced one dictatorship with another.

In chapter 5, Snowball suggests that the animals should be put to work constructing a windmill, a task that will admittedly involve very hard labor but that will introduce mechanization into the process of running the farm. The subject is contentious, with Napoleon, modeled on Joseph Stalin, resisting the idea until his arch rival for power and influence, Snowball (modeled on Leon Trotsky), is forced off the farm. After his rival’s defeat, Napoleon reverses his position and orders the windmill be constructed, and the growing distinction between the pigs and the rest of the animals is increasingly apparent. In chapter 6, the backbreaking work of building the windmill is undertaken. Observing that the pigs exempted themselves from manual labor so that they could supervise the rest of the animals, Orwell’s narrator describes the gradual deterioration of the utopian image of a worker’s paradise envisioned by the now-exiled Snowball and Napoleon:

The pigs did not actually work, but directed and supervised the others. With their superior knowledge it was natural that they should assume the leadership. . .

ALL that year the animals worked like slaves. But they were happy in their work; they grudged no effort or sacrifice, well aware that everything that they did was for the benefit of themselves and those of their kind who would come after them, and not for a pack of idle, thieving human beings.

Throughout the spring and summer they worked a sixty−hour week, and in August Napoleon announced that there would be work on Sunday afternoons as well. This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.

As Animal Farm continues, the animals continue to be overworked while the pigs sit atop a hierarchy that was not supposed to exist and issue orders. Napoleon/Stalin has systematically used cunning and ruthlessness to emerge as “first among equals” at the expense of the rest of the animals, and the realization that one dictatorship has merely been replaced by another, more ruthless one, is cemented.

When the animals listen to Old Major's dream, he describes a communal experience where all animals on the farm do an equal amount of work and get plenty of rest.  However, when Animal Farm becomes a reality this is not the case.  At first the animals work together for the most part, but the pigs still serve as overseers and not laborers.  From the beginning, the pigs take the best of everything for themselves.  They take the apples and milk, then live in the house, then drink alcohol.  The animals work more and more, and rest less and less.  The paddock that was supposed to be set aside for their retirement is sewn with crops so the pigs can have alcohol.  The animals work harder and harder to build, and then rebuild, the windmill.  Between the crops and the windmill, Napoleon keeps the animals working all the time.  When Boxed becomes to old and sick to work, they sell him for the meat.

In chapter six, Napoleon announces that there will now be work for the animals to complete on Sunday afternoons too. This extra work is in addition to the sixty-hour week that the animals are already working. Napoleon announces that the work on Sunday afternoons will be "strictly voluntary," but also says that "any animal who absent[s] himself from it [will] have his rations reduced by half." In other words, the work on Sunday afternoons is not really voluntary at all. The animals already don't have enough rations, and none (except of course for the pigs) can afford to lose half of what they do have.

At the end of the story, Mr. Pilkington congratulates Napoleon on "the low rations (and) the long working hours ... which he had observed on Animal Farm." Earlier in the story, in chapter nine, we are told that the animals "were often hungry and often cold, and that they were usually working when they were not asleep." The implication is that, under Napoleon's leadership, the animals are forced to work more hours in a week, in worse conditions, and with fewer rations, than they were when the farm belonged to Mr. Jones.

Napoleon adjusts the working week for the animals so that they work harder, longer, and for less. And Napoleon adjusts the working week in this way entirely for the benefit of himself and the other pigs. Indeed, Napoleon uses the windmill that the animals work so hard to build, and which was originally intended to generate electricity to make the lives of the animals easier and more comfortable, to instead generate "a handsome money profit." This profit is then enjoyed, of course, only by Napoleon and the other pigs.

Napoleon is able to use the control of information for his own benefit in a couple of ways.  The first way he is able to control information to his own benefit is in making sure that what the animals know serves to substantiate his own condition of power.  Through the information dissemination powers of Squealer, Napoleon is able to able to control the flow of information to the other animals. This results in being able to inflate figures and statistics that make his rule seem to benefit the animals when it really doesn't, to find political scapegoats towards whom he can place blame for the animals' hardships, and to ensure that the information the animals receive always reminds them that "it was worse under Jones' rule."  For Napoleon, being able to use the control of information in this manner ensures he will always be able to remain in political control of the farm and over the animals who toil on it.  

At the same time, Napoleon is able to ensure that the other animals hear of no other forms of information that could possible challenge his version of "truth."  Napoleon is not only controlling of his message and the information that the animals receive regarding it. He also ensures the control of information the animals receive. Anytime that there are small whispers of information that would contradict his accepted version, he is able to deploy Squealer to counter it effectively.  If this did not work, Napoleon was able to use the dogs as his way of ensuring that the information the animals either received or spoke of was delivered by him, for him.  In this way, Napoleon demonstrates another way as to how he was able to use the control of information for his own benefit.

When Napoleon takes over control of Animal Farm by driving off Snowball, the effect is that he twists the ideals of the animals' revolution to add to his own personal power. He violently purges the farm of imagined enemies by using the dogs. He profits from trade with humans on other farms. He and the other pigs begin to engage in human-like activities, dressing in men's clothes, walking around on two legs, drinking alcohol, and gambling. He also demands more of the other animals, who are expected to sacrifice their labor (on the windmill, in particular) for what is portrayed as the common good. Even old Boxer is sent to the knacker to be killed, a bitter irony considering that Old Major warned him that Mr. Jones would one day send him to this fate. In short, the pigs become more and more corrupt, and this makes life for the other animals as bad or worse as it was under Mr. Jones.

It is worth noting that Napoleon does not explicitly ban the education of the other animals at any point in the story. Instead, the reader is left to infer that this is the case, notably after the expulsion of Snowball. Remember that education was Snowball’s idea. He wanted all of the animals to have a decent level of education, including a decent level of literacy. However, once he is expelled by Napoleon in chapter 5, Squealer announces an end to the Sunday meetings and that the windmill will be built, so the reader is left to imagine that Snowball’s educational committees have gone, too.

In chapter 9, however, Napoleon announces that a schoolroom will be built to facilitate the education of the piglets. This involves a considerable amount of labor, as well as money to buy the building materials.

By choosing to educate the piglets and not continue the education of the other animals, Napoleon is sending a strong message. In effect, he is strengthening the divide between the pigs and the other animals through the creation of a hierarchy. It is now clear the pigs are the true rulers, hence the need for them to be educated, while the other animals are simply there to provide labor.