Animal Farm Reading between the lines Quiz

Animal Farm Reading between the lines questions

The answers and an explanation for each question appear as you play, and on the answer-key page of the printout.

1. Old Major puts the question of whether rats count as comrades to a vote. What does that moment reveal about his vision?
   Only the farm's working animals are given a real vote · The animals have already split into rival parties · Who counts as a comrade is settled by a show of hands · The pigs intend to control every decision from the start
2. The pigs work Old Major's ideas up into a named doctrine. What does systematising it achieve for them?
   It persuades the neighbouring farms to join the rising · It lets every animal propose new rules each week · It gives the animals a written contract Jones must honour · It makes the pigs the authorities on what the rules mean
3. Squealer explains why the pigs alone get the milk and the windfall apples. What does his argument depend on?
   A rule about food that Old Major had laid down · Pigs' brain work, plus the threat of Jones coming back · A vote taken at the Sunday meeting in the big barn · The pigs' extra hours of labour during the harvest
4. Mollie's conduct during the battle sits oddly beside the medals handed out afterwards. What does the contrast establish?
   The dogs are the only animals the leaders really trust · The medals are given out by lot rather than by merit · The farm rewards courage and quietly notes who hid · The pigs take all the credit for the animals' fighting
5. Three weeks after the expulsion Napoleon announces the windmill will be built. How is the reversal explained?
   It is presented as a request from the other farms · The animals are told the vote has been held again · Squealer says the harvest has made it affordable · The design is said to have been Napoleon's all along
6. Sunday afternoon work is called voluntary. What makes it compulsory in practice?
   Absentees are named at the next flag ceremony · Staying away costs an animal half its rations · The sheep are set to bleat at anyone resting · The dogs patrol the fields on Sunday afternoons
7. How does the hens' resistance to the order to give up their eggs end?
   Squealer negotiates a smaller weekly quota with them · Napoleon withdraws the order after Clover intervenes · The hens are moved to a separate yard and ignored · Rations are cut off and the hens give in after deaths
8. Squealer is found at night at the foot of a broken ladder by the barn wall, a paintbrush beside him. What does the episode let the reader see?
   The pigs are copying the rules into a ledger · The pigs are repainting the farm's flag in secret · Squealer is adding Minimus's poem to the wall · The rules are being quietly rewritten by the pigs
9. Why do the pigs tolerate Moses now, when they once contradicted him?
   He is the only animal who remembers Old Major · He carries messages to and from the other farms · His promised afterlife makes hard work bearable · He has agreed to teach the young pigs to read
10. Years on, the farm has grown richer. Who has gained by it?
    The neighbouring farms, through steady trade · The pigs and the dogs, and nobody else · Every animal, through shorter working hours · Clover and Benjamin, who have been retired
11. Why is the exiled Snowball more useful to Napoleon than the Snowball who stayed?
    His name still holds the older animals' loyalty · His plans can be carried out under another name · He keeps the other farms from attacking at all · Blame can be pinned on him without contradiction
12. Squealer takes the sheep away for a week shortly before the pigs appear on two legs. Why does that order of events matter?
    Squealer needs them away to repaint the barn wall · The sheep are taught to read the rules themselves · The new chant is ready before the change is seen · The sheep are being punished for refusing to chant

More Animal Farm practice: all Animal Farm quizzes · characters quiz · themes quiz · language & structure quiz

Original questions written for Pagine. This book is in copyright, so questions paraphrase rather than quote it.