Clover Character Analysis in Animal Farm

Animal Farm Clover Character Analysis

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A loyal, hard-working cart-horse, Clover represents a maternal figure on the farm who looks out for the smaller animals and, along with Benjamin, cautions Boxer to temper how much he works. During Old Major’s speech about his dream of Rebellion, the theft of Clover’s children is mentioned as one of the reasons the animals should rebel. Clover believes in the Rebellion and the dream of equality that such a shift in power would bring to the animals. Though not literate, Clover is able to learn the alphabet. As the pigs begin corrupting the tenets of Animalism, Clover is one of the few animals that senses a change in the original premise on which the commandments were written. Unable to read, she asks other animals, like Muriel, to read them to her. Though not remembering and feeling uneasy about the additions made to the original commandments, Clover accepts the commandments at face value and lacks a voice to speak out against the pigs’ supremacy over the farm.

Most powerfully in Chapter VII, Clover reflects on the difference between the fantasy of what Animal Farm was supposed to be and the cruel reality of what it subsequently became. Though she can acknowledge that their current predicament has strayed from the original ideal set forth by Old Major, she is unable to articulate verbally to the other animals the disappointment she feels. As a witness to the violence that transpires on the farm, Clover represents the naivety of the working class and the sad lesson of what occurs when those in power work to keep those below them from coming together and opposing their system of oppression. In one of the most grueling scenes of the novella, it is Clover that realizes that Boxer is being taken to his death and screams out to him to escape, yet her attempts to save her friend’s life are futile, as Boxer, old and overworked, is unable to gather the strength to set himself free. In another instance, it is Clover who alerts the animals to the horrific scene at the end of the novella, where Napoleon and the pigs are seen entangled with humans, their roles having become indiscernible. In this regard, Clover acts both as a witness to the violence perpetrated by the pigs and as one of the few animals that experiences the outcome of the Rebellion, not as a socialist paradise based on equality, but as a return to the status quo.

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