Lucas Fuentes

Adriana Gonzalez
3rd Year
Essay N°2
Animal Farm
How different Napoleon and Snowball’s leadership was
26th June, 2017

To obey or to not obey?

What is leadership? According to Dwight Eisenhower "Leadership is the art of

getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." There is

no rule for saying that leadership must be commanded by only one authority. This seems

to be the case of Napoleon and Snowball, characters in the story Animal Farm. Submitted

under a victorious rebellion, the two characters represented by pigs, emerge to command

the farm. Consequently, Napoleon and Snowball show us clear differences between their

leadership.

On the one hand, Napoleon develops a tyrannical role on the farm’s command.

Despite the fact that Napoleon leads the farm as an equal power figure with Snowball, we

can see corruption and tyranny in his actions. The first action Napoleon takes is to save

the milk and apples for benefit of the pigs only. He achieves this through a convincing

speech given by Squealer, a kind of pigs’ spokesman. Also, the leader takes care of nine

puppies with the purpose of taking care of them. Although it seems a good action, he does

this in order to use them as a personal guard. Consequently, when Snowball has

completed his plans for creating a windmill, Napoleon calls the nine puppies and they

chase him off the farm. The purpose of this action is that Napoleon wants to take

possession of the project for creating the windmill and also he wants to be the only leader

of the farm. Then, Napoleon proclaims himself as the farm’s leader and takes possession
Lucas Fuentes
Adriana Gonzalez
3rd Year
Essay N°2
Animal Farm
How different Napoleon and Snowball’s leadership was
26th June, 2017

of Snowball’s plan for the windmill. Finally, being the leader, he starts to cut the rations,

trade with a human lawyer, sell chickens’ eggs and change the commandments for

personal benefits in order to permit pigs to sleep on beds or drink alcohol or kill other

animals with a “reason.” For all those reasons before mentioned, we can see Napoleon’s

despotic command through his actions which leads him ending as a totalitarian leader.

On the other hand, Snowball shows us a beneficial command on the farm. Despite

the fact that he never gets to an arrangement with Napoleon, Snowball tries to improve

Animal Farm’s infrastructure and shows interests for a common good in order to benefit

animals’ development. For instance, Snowball creates committees in order to educate

animals. He achieves this with the cooperation of the cleverer animals on the farm, the

pigs. As he sees that some animals have problems to memorize the seven

commandments, he reduces them for the purpose of making them easier to memorize.

Consequently, the commandments are reduced to: “Four legs good, two legs bad.”

Snowball contributes in the battle of the cowshed to repel humans’ attack. During the

encounter, he commands animals giving commandments in order to segment the battle on

three stages which helps them to achieve a successful ambush. Also, he charges against

Jones, the original farm owner, who opens fire against Snowball. Finally, he starts a

project to create a windmill, with the purpose of creating a renewable resource for having

electricity on the farm. Then, he achieves the project because he creates the plans using
Lucas Fuentes
Adriana Gonzalez
3rd Year
Essay N°2
Animal Farm
How different Napoleon and Snowball’s leadership was
26th June, 2017

books which belonged to Jones. For all before mentioned, we can see how Snowball fights

for the farm’s beneficial development.

This essay has attempted to develop two postures on the leadership managed by

Napoleon and Snowball. The continual struggle between them shows us a clear interest in

their command. Selfishness, tyranny and despotism are shown by Napoleon’s hooves,

while, interests for common good and devotion are shown by Snowball. The assumption is

that if we analyze the actions taken by the pigs, we can see how they take step by step

towards a purpose, for example, Napoleon takes steps to a despotic goal and Snowball to

a favorable one. Also, is important to remark that as they walk their own path developing

their actions, they command the members of the farm in order to obtain from them a final

result, which could help a selfish objective or all the opposite. To sum up, the actions taken

by the pigs show us the road which a leader may walk during his/her time on the power in

order to use people for selfish or disinterested objectives.