A revolution can succeed and still be lost. Animal Farm's inherited objects, the windmill, farmhouse, gun, flag, and whip, prove that revolutionary power survives not by being overthrown but by being absorbed into the hands of new masters. Orwell tightens this argument in concentric rings, moving outward from the animals' own creations to the instruments of human rule they thought they had destroyed.
The animals build their future with the same tools that will cage them. The windmill and the farmhouse show inheritance working from opposite directions, one rising from aspiration and one falling from prohibition. The windmill begins as a promise. Snowball draws the plans and predicts a three-day week, 'He said very quietly that the windmill was nonsense and that he advised nobody to vote for it'. Napoleon first mocks the scheme, then seizes it once Snowball is gone. The animals give up their Sundays to haul stone, 'A terrible sight had met their eyes. The windmill was in ruins.'. When the walls fall, Napoleon blames Snowball and drives them to rebuild through winter, 'they had collaborated with him in destroying the windmill, and that they had entered into an agreement with him to hand over Animal Farm'. By its second completion the mill no longer promises leisure; it grinds corn for sale, 'The windmill had ceased to exist!'. Boxer works himself to death on its stones, and his body is sold to the knacker to fund more machinery, 'only one real ambition left-to see the windmill well under way before he reached the age for retirement'. Napoleon later strides past the finished mill on two legs, 'The windmill had been successfully completed at last'. A dream of liberation has become an engine of extraction. The farmhouse runs the same arc in reverse. At the Rebellion it is set aside as a museum of human vice, its beds and whiskey forbidden, 'filed back to the farm buildings and halted in silence outside the door of the farmhouse. That was theirs too, but they were frightened to go inside.'. The commandments record that no animal may sleep in a bed, 'had studied an old book of Julius Caesar's campaigns which he had found in the farmhouse, was in charge of the defensive operations.'. Soon the pigs move in, then rewrite the rule to suit themselves, 'It was about this time that the pigs suddenly moved into the farmhouse and took up their residence there.'. By the final chapter the farmhouse is a dining room where pigs and humans bargain together, 'In the evening he returned to the farmhouse himself, but, as it was warm weather, told the sheep to stay where they were.'. What was taboo becomes the throne.
That power needs to look legitimate, not just feel strong. The gun and the flag show inheritance working through ceremony, as captured symbols of liberation are redeployed to manufacture the animals' consent. The gun enters the story as a threat. Jones leans it against the flagpole, ready for trouble, 'He seized the gun which always stood in a corner of his bedroom, and let fly a charge of number 6'. After the Rebellion the animals fire it to mark their anniversaries, 'Mr. Jones's gun had been found lying in the mud, and it was known that there was a supply of cartridges in the farmhouse.'. A weapon of human authority becomes a festival horn. Napoleon then claims the gun for his own ceremonies, firing it on his birthday, 'how he had not paused for an instant even when the pellets from Jones's gun had wounded his back. At first it was a little difficult to see how this fitted'. The shots that once celebrated liberation now celebrate him. By the final chapter the gun is fired in greeting when human farmers visit, 'when they heard the gun booming and saw the green flag fluttering at the masthead, their hearts swelled'. The flag tells the same story. Snowball first raises the green banner as a sign of animal freedom, 'First came the hoisting of the flag. Snowball had found in the harness-room an old green tablecloth of Mrs. Jones's'. The animals salute it after every victory, 'The flag was run up and Beasts of England was sung a number of times, then the sheep who'. Years later the flag still flies, but its meaning has narrowed, 'But when the animals saw the green flag flying, and heard the gun firing again-seven times it was fired in all-and hear'. Napoleon replaces the horn and hoof with his own image, and the flag flies for the Republic of the Animals in name only, 'the green flag fluttering at the masthead, their hearts swelled with imperishable pride, and t'. The symbols that once named the animals' hope now name the pigs' rule.
Ceremony can hide coercion, but it cannot replace it. Napoleon finishes the reversal by taking up the one object the animals had burned. The whip is the oldest instrument of human power on the farm. Jones carries it as a matter of course, 'Cruel whips no more shall crack.'. At the Rebellion the animals burn the harnesses and ribbons, and the whip goes with them, 'he and his four men were in the store-shed with whips in their hands, lashing out in all directions.'. For a time it is gone, and its absence marks the farm as free. Then the executions begin, and Napoleon's dogs drive the animals forward with a violence that does the whip's work without it, 'it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity'. The whip returns in the final chapter, carried in a pig's trotter, 'He carried a whip in his trotter.'. The object the animals burned at the start has walked back into their lives. Its return is the hinge of the whole novel: the inheritors are now indistinguishable from the overthrown. The ring closes.
Animal Farm does not argue that revolution is futile. It argues that revolution is incomplete if its tools are not also transformed. The windmill, the farmhouse, the gun, the flag, and the whip each change hands without changing nature, and that continuity is the tragedy. Orwell's concentric design makes the reader feel the trap closing: the further the animals move from Jones, the more their leaders resemble him. By the end the faces in the farmhouse window are impossible to tell apart, and the objects that built the Revolution have become the proof that it failed.