Character analysis
Squealer
in Animal Farm by George Orwell
Squealer, a small, fat pig and Napoleon's chief propagandist in George Orwell's Animal Farm, plays a crucial role in this satirical take on totalitarianism. Described as a brilliant talker, he becomes the regime's mouthpiece as soon as Napoleon takes control, twisting every act of cruelty into language that the other animals can either accept or fear.
His character evolves from an eager revolutionary to a cynical tool of oppression. In the beginning, he brushes off concerns about the pigs' exclusive access to milk and apples by warning that Jones could return — a recurring threat he uses to stifle any dissent. After Snowball's expulsion, Squealer begins to rewrite history, first downplaying Snowball's contributions in the Battle of the Cowshed, then labeling him a traitor who "had been Jones's agent from the very start." He even changes the Seven Commandments under the cover of night — with Clover catching him red-handed, holding a lantern and paintbrush — altering "shall not kill" to "shall not kill without cause" and ultimately replacing all commands with "ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS."
Squealer's main traits include verbal skill, shamelessness, and cowardice: he never fights in battles but is always on hand to explain the fallout. One of his most chilling moments is when he fabricates a deathbed account of Boxer's final words, twisting the horse's betrayal into a narrative of loyalty that keeps the other animals compliant. Squealer is a representation of how language can be weaponized for control, making him one of literature's most memorable examples of political manipulation.
Who they are
Squealer is introduced as a small, fat pig with "very round cheeks, twinkling eyes, nimble movements, and a shrill voice." Crucially, Orwell describes him as "a brilliant talker" who, when arguing a difficult point, tends to "skip from side to side and whisk his tail" in a way that is "somehow very persuasive." From his first significant scene — justifying the pigs' monopoly on the milk and windfall apples — he is established not as a thinker or a fighter but as a performer, a creature whose entire value to those in power lies in his ability to make the unacceptable sound reasonable. He possesses no independent authority; he is Napoleon's instrument, the regime's voice box, and his identity is almost entirely defined by that function. Where Napoleon is blunt force, Squealer is the lubricant that allows that force to move without friction.
Arc & motivation
Squealer begins the novel as an eager revolutionary who appears to believe in the principles of Animalism — or at least finds them useful. His early speeches carry the energy of a true convert. By the novel's end, however, he is drunk, stumbling in the night beside a broken ladder and a spilled paint pot, having just altered the last surviving commandment. The arc is one of progressive cynicism: each lie requires a larger lie to support it, and Squealer transitions from selective emphasis to outright fabrication without visible crisis of conscience. His motivation is not ideological conviction but self-preservation and appetite. He relishes the privileges of porcine power — the whisky, the comfortable bed, the extra rations — and propaganda is simply the price he pays for them. He is not a true believer; he is a careerist who has chosen the winning side and does whatever is necessary to remain there.
Key moments
The milk-and-apples justification in the early chapters establishes his template: appeal to science ("Milk and apples contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig"), appeal to shared interest, and close with the Jones threat. This approach works immediately and perfectly, which is why he never abandons the formula.
The progressive defamation of Snowball across several chapters demonstrates Squealer's technique of incremental revision. He first minimizes Snowball's role at the Battle of the Cowshed, then questions his motives, strips his military decoration, and finally, in a jaw-dropping escalation, declares that Snowball "had been Jones's agent from the very start." Each stage prepares the animals for the next, illustrating that sustained propaganda is more effective than a single dramatic lie.
The nocturnal commandment alterations — Clover spotting Squealer on the barn wall with a lantern and paintbrush — create the novel's most visually precise image of rewriting history. His guilt is unmistakable, yet he manages to talk his way out of it by the morning.
His fabrication of Boxer's death scene, where he invents last words praising Napoleon and describes a dignified passing in a hospital, is his coldest moment. He converts the regime's most shameful act — selling a loyal worker to the knackers — into an advertisement for Napoleon's benevolence.
Relationships in depth
Squealer's relationship with Napoleon is one of absolute dependency flowing both ways: Napoleon needs Squealer's voice; Squealer needs Napoleon's protection. He never challenges Napoleon in any scene and consistently frames disagreement with him as an existential danger to the farm, collapsing the distinction between loyalty to a leader and loyalty to a cause.
With Snowball, Squealer's role is purely destructive. Snowball is an inconvenient historical fact, and Squealer's job is to eliminate him — first from the present, then from the past. The relationship is parasitic; Squealer exploits Snowball's former credibility, inverting it into evidence of treachery.
Boxer is Squealer's most tragic audience. Boxer's motto "Napoleon is always right" makes him almost pre-propagandised, and Squealer exploits this until the very end, manufacturing a peaceful death for an animal sold for slaughter.
Clover represents Squealer's greatest structural vulnerability — the partially literate, morally intuitive observer who feels the deception without being able to articulate it. Her helpless confusion at the altered commandments highlights exactly what Squealer's literacy-gap strategy depends on.
Connected characters
- Napoleon
Squealer is Napoleon's indispensable enforcer of narrative. Every policy Napoleon enacts — hoarding food, executing dissenters, trading with humans — is immediately justified by Squealer to the farm population. He never questions Napoleon publicly and frames all criticism of him as tantamount to inviting Jones's return, functioning as the dictator's voice and shield.
- Snowball
Snowball is Squealer's primary rhetorical target. After Napoleon drives Snowball out, Squealer progressively blackens his reputation across multiple scenes — stripping him of his Battle of the Cowshed medal, accusing him of sabotage, and finally declaring him a spy for Jones from the beginning — demonstrating how propaganda erases inconvenient heroes.
- Boxer
Boxer's blind trust in Napoleon makes him Squealer's easiest audience. Squealer exploits Boxer's loyalty by inventing a deathbed scene in which Boxer supposedly praises Napoleon with his last breath, converting the horse's sale to the knacker into a story of peaceful passing — his most cynical manipulation in the novel.
- Clover
Clover is the animal most likely to notice Squealer's deceptions; she spells out the altered commandments on the barn wall and senses something is wrong, but lacks the literacy and confidence to challenge him. Her helpless suspicion highlights how Squealer's tactics exploit the uneducated and well-meaning.
- Old Major
Old Major's original vision of Animalism provides the ideological raw material that Squealer later distorts. Squealer never openly repudiates Old Major but systematically inverts his teachings, turning the founding dream of equality into its opposite while still invoking its language.
- Mr. Jones
Jones functions in Squealer's rhetoric as a perpetual bogeyman. The phrase 'Surely, comrades, you do not want Jones to come back?' is Squealer's all-purpose silencer, used to justify every privilege the pigs claim and every hardship the other animals endure.
Use this in your essay
Language as the primary instrument of oppression
argue that in *Animal Farm*, physical force (the dogs) would be insufficient without Squealer's rhetorical apparatus — examine what this suggests about how totalitarian regimes sustain themselves.
Squealer as a study in moral cowardice
trace how his absence from every battle or confrontation, combined with his presence at every aftermath, constructs a portrait of someone who profits from violence without ever risking it.
The mechanics of historical revisionism
using Squealer's treatment of Snowball as a case study, analyse how Orwell dramatises the Stalinist rewriting of the past and what it implies about the relationship between collective memory and political power.
Squealer versus Old Major — corruption of founding ideals
explore how Squealer systematically inverts Animalism's original principles while continuing to invoke its language, and what Orwell implies about the life-cycle of revolutionary rhetoric.
The willing propagandist
compare Squealer to characters like Boxer who are *deceived* and consider whether Orwell presents Squealer's conscious complicity as more or less culpable than the blind faith of his victims.