Chapter 9 (by Kyle)

This chapter made me very angry because of a major event that occurred. Obviously Boxer, the most loyal and hardest working animal on the farm aged and was ready for retirement, especially after going through a major injury. At this point in the chapter, Napoleon has promised all of the animals that he would get someone to come and take the weary Boxer to a hospital, and when the people from the "hospital" come, the animals all notice that the truck actually says they slaughter horses and use the parts of the body to make different products. That's when the animals realize Boxer is to be intentionally killed. They tried to save Boxer, but he was too weak to escape. Once again, the pigs were very convincing by saying that the hospital got the trailer from a place that used to slaughter horses. What made me even more frustrated is that, as the reader had to infer, the money the pigs made from Boxer's body was used to buy alcohol for the pigs. By the end of the chapter, the remaining animals seem very suspicious of the activity that is going on behind their backs. With one chapter remaining, I can see there being a lot of conflict that will eventually lead to the demise of the Animal Farm. Just as Orwell intended, this will send a message across about how he feels about the Russian society during the time period it was written. I can tell the author has taken real life aspects and events of the Soviet Union and put them in this simpler, fictional society so the reader could see what was wrong with the Soviet Union and the reasoning for that belief (obviously this is an example of an allegory, as I have mentioned in some of my earlier posts). I really would like to see this book end happily, and I would like to see justice served with the pigs in the conclusion of this novel, however if the author wants to get his message across correctly, I highly doubt he would do anything of that sort. Although, the fact that the pigs have strayed away from the foundations the Animal Farm was built upon is the thing that troubles me the most. I am still surprised at how good of a job the pigs are doing at keeping the changes they are making discrete, but I guess we could credit that reasoning to the fact they are working with other animals who, in general are not as intelligent, especially since the pigs are keeping them from becoming educated.