Benjamin and Clover

How Orwell presents Benjamin and Clover, and how the character develops across the text: the cynical donkey who understands but does not act, and the motherly mare who senses that the Rebellion has gone wrong.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Benjamin was the oldest animal on the farm, and the worst tempered', 'he would sooner have had no tail and no flies', 'Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey', 'Benjamin could read as well as any pig, but never exercised his faculty', 'life would go on as it had always gone on—that is, badly', 'seemed to understand, but would say nothing', 'the unalterable law of life', 'Clover was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life', 'Clover made a sort of wall round them with her great foreleg', 'These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to', 'a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip', 'it was not for this that she and all the other animals had hoped and toiled', 'Get out quickly! They are taking you to your death!', 'Are the Seven Commandments the same as they used to be, Benjamin?'.
Benjamin's silence and Clover's loyalty: why neither stops the pigs, and the evening Benjamin finally reads the wall to her.

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