Who are the villains in Animal Farm?
The villains in Animal Farm would have to be the humans and the pigs, such as Napoleon and Squealer. In Old Major's initial speech to the animals in Chapter 1, he outlines how humans are the fundamental enemy to the animals:
Why then do we continue in this miserable condition? Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us by human beings. There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word--Man. Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever.
Human beings are seen as the source of all exploitation on the farm. Old Major draws the picture of how human beings are responsible for the animals' suffering and thus, they are the fundamental villain. The way in...
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which Jones brutalizes the animals and mistreats them would help to make him a villain.
As the revolution takes place, the pigs become the leader of the animals. Within the pigs, a power struggle takes place between Napoleon and Snowball. Napoleon is more motivated by power, while Snowball is more devoted to the tenets of the Animalistic revolution. When both contest for power, Napoleon is able run Snowball off the farm and consolidate all power for himself. As Napoleon and Squealer, his minister of propaganda, gain greater power, they resemble the humans in their desire to silence the voices of the animals and exploit them for their own benefit. Their use of the dogs to maintain control becomes evident and quite brutal as a means of repression.
In this regard, the pigs become villains. The animals are conditioned to simply accept such a state of being in the world. As a result, they are not able to successfully rise against Napoleon. Those who do face a brutal and painful end, as seen in chapter 7 with the Minorca pullets and other animals who are perceived to be "enemies" of "Comrade Napoleon." The manipulation of power and the ability to be indistinguishable from human beings is what makes the pigs such as Napoleon and Squealer the villains at the end of Animal Farm. The ending scene in which the animals are on the outside looking in at both of their oppressors is reflective of villain status being conferred on both the pigs and the human beings.
How do the antagonists challenge the protagonist in Animal Farm?
If we accept Napoleon as the story's main—but by no means only—protagonist, then we can see the brave hens who stand up to his tyranny as his antagonists. Napoleon is determined to steal the hens' eggs, which he intends to sell to humans in the neighboring towns and villages. But the hens refuse to play ball. They remember that Old Major, the story's previous protagonist, always said that the hens must be allowed to keep their eggs and that taking their eggs from them was yet another example of human tyranny over animals. Yet Napoleon is now behaving just like the hated human oppressor of old, appropriating the hens' eggs to sell for profit.
The hens respond to Napoleon's new order by refusing to hand over their eggs, dropping them on the ground instead so that they smash on impact. Through their defiance they are acting as Napoleon's antagonists, though their brief, but heroic, rebellion against his rapidly developing tyranny is ultimately futile, and they are brutally put to death.
The antagonists and protagonists switch throughout the novel. In the beginning, Old Major and then Napoleon and Snowball lead the group of protagonists: the animals themselves. From this perspective, Mr. Jones is the main and initial antagonist. He is their owner and oppressor. They are essentially his slaves. Old Major sets the stage to rebel against Mr. Jones. In Chapter 2, Jones gets drunk and forgets or neglects to feed the animals. They help themselves to the food. Jones and his workers attack and the animal rebellion has begun. Jones is chased off the farm and the animals gain control. Jones and the other farmers continue to be antagonists to the animals. However, within Animal Farm itself, a new division of antagonists and protagonists emerges.
The pigs begin to gain too much control over the other animals. (This is an allegory of the Russian Revolution. Old Major represents Lenin, Snowball represents Trotsky, and Napoleon represents Stalin. The Russian Revolution started out with promise and the support of the people. But it soon became corrupted with too much power at the top.) With the growing power of the pigs, the other animals become more poorly treated. This increases exponentially when Napoleon ousts Snowball from the farm. By the end of the novel, Napoleon has become a dictator. He has become as bad, if not worse, than the original antagonists: the humans. With Napoleon running the farm with an iron fist (or hoof), he then becomes the animals' primary antagonist. He makes them work harder than they ever have and he gives them less and less to eat.
At the end of the novel, there is a striking scene showing how Napoleon and the pigs (once protagonists and now antagonists) have now become identical to the humans:
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.