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Animal Farm

Characters

Animal Farm Mr. Jones Character Analysis

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Characters Animal Farm Mr. Jones Character Analysis

Mr. Jones is the cruel and often-drunk owner of Manor Farm. He represents Tsar Nicholas II, the Russian Tsar who was thrown out of Russia after the revolution. Mr. Jones’s first action in the novella—the gunshot he fires after being awakened by the animals singing in joy after Old Major’s speech—confirms the animals’ desire for a better life. By setting up this juxtaposition between Old Major’s speech and Mr. Jones’s gunshot, Orwell highlights the limits of abstract theory and oration in relation to the success of a revolution. What is necessary for revolution is action. It is Mr. Jones’s incompetence, by getting drunk and forgetting to feed the animals on the farm, that leads the animals to finally revolt, an uprising that happens aost without warning and spontaneously, so much so that the novella mentions how “before they knew what was happening, the Rebellion had been successfully carried through. Mr. Jones was expelled, and Manor Farm was theirs.”

After Mr. Jones is removed from the farm, his name becomes symbolic of the past. Thus, when any question of Napoleon’s leadership or the pigs’ decisions are brought up, Mr. Jones’s name is invoked as a threat to their security. By framing Mr. Jones as the natural enemy to the farm, the pigs’ dictatorship can go unopposed, as it blinds the animals from considering the possibility that a farm, ruled by the pigs, could be worse than it was when Mr. Jones was in charge.

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