The+Hens

 The Hens

Background Information:
 * The dreadful famine that engulfed Ukraine in 1932- 1933 was the result of Joseph Stalin's policy of forced collectivization.
 * In 1932, even with a shortage of grains Stalin raised Ukraine's grain procurement quota by forty-four percent. Which in turn led to Ukrainian peasant workers not having enough food to feed themselves and their families.
 * Peasant farm workers were forced to give their goods to the government so that they could be evenly distributed to the people of the nation. Many peasants resisted these new policies, some went as far as even destroying their own grains so the government could not get them.
 * Party officials with the aid of regular troops and secret police units, waged a merciless war of attrition against farmers who refused to give up their grain. Any man, woman, or child caught taking even a handful of grain from a collective farm would be either executed or deported

...this is the basis through which George Orwell created The Hens.

﻿How does this really relate to the hens of Animal Farm? Grain = Eggs Quotes from the text:
 * In Chapter seven, Napolean calls for the Hens to "surrender their eggs."
 * This was a reference to Stalin's attempt collectivize the peasant farmers of Russia.
 * Similar to the Ukranian people, the hens tried to resist the order at first, but complications arose when Napolean made it so their rations would be stopped and decreed that, "Any animal given so much as a grain of corn to a hen should be punished by death"(Orwell, 1946).
 * The Hens and the Ukranian people were both "ordered" to death by starvation.

"When the hens heard this, they raised a terrible outcry. They had been warned earlier that this sacrifice might be necessary, but had not believed that it would really happen. They were just getting their clutches ready for the spring sitting, and they protested that to take away their eggs now would be murder" (Orwell, 1946).
 * The hens thought that their hard work would prove prosperous, and that soon they would bare children who can also live with the freedom of life on animal farm.

"Led by three young Black Minorca pullets, the hens made a determined effort to thwart Napoleon's wishes. Their method was to fly up to the rafters and there lay their eggs, which smashed to pieces on the floor" (Orwell, 1946).
 * In an act of protest then hens decided that, if they were going to lose the eggs, then they were not going to give them freely to the humans.

"He [Napoleon] ordered the hens' rations to be stopped, and decreed that any animal giving so much as a grain of corn to a hen should be punished by death. The dogs saw to it that these orders were carried out. For five days the hens held out, then they capitulated and went back to their nesting boxes. Nine hens had died in the meantime... and it was given out that they had died of coccidiosis.... the eggs were duly delivered, a grocer's van driving up to the farm once a week to take them away" (Orwell, 1946).
 * The hens' act of protest was turned into an act of treason by Napoleon ability to twist the minds of the ignorant. By cutting off their food sources he condemned the hens to death, and when they did die he "informed" the other animals that their cause of death was coccidiosis.
 * Coccidiosis is an intestinal disease that affects cattle.

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Helpful links:

Animal Farm: [] []

Ukrainian Famine [] [] []