Napoleon’s decision to execute other animals is foreshadowed in Chapter 1, when Old Major says: “You young porkers who are sitting in front of me, every one of you will scream your lives out at the block within a year.” This prophecy comes true, but instead of being killed by Mr. Jones on the butcher’s “block,” the porkers are killed on Napoleon’s orders on the executioner’s “block.” By using an example of Mr. Jones’s cruelty to foreshadow Napoleon’s, the novella argues that the two regimes, human and pig, are essentially the same.
