Chapters 9 and 10 — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Chapters 9 and 10
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
Boxer's collapse and his sale to the knacker, the Republic, Moses's return, the years that pass, the pigs on two legs,
the single Commandment and the card game with the farmers.
Key quotations: 'something called a Spontaneous Demonstration', 'There was only one candidate, Napoleon, who was elected unanimously.', 'that happy country where we poor animals shall rest for ever from our labours', 'Fools! Do you not see what is written on the side of that van?', 'Alfred Simmonds, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willingdon', 'Boxer was never seen again.', 'the pigs had acquired the money to buy themselves another case of whisky', 'Snowball was forgotten. Boxer was forgotten, except by the few who had known him.', 'It was a pig walking on his hind legs.', 'He carried a whip in his trotter.', 'Four legs good, two legs better!', 'To the prosperity of The Manor Farm!', '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'.
Structure: the circular ending, the single Commandment left on the wall, and the farm's old name restored.
Context: the Tehran Conference of 1943 between Stalin and the Western leaders, and the quarrel over the cards as Orwell's warning that the friendship would not last.
For Edexcel's essay on this text, link each point to its context and the writer's purpose, which earn as many marks as knowledge of the text (16 of 40); language analysis earns no marks there.