Animal Farm Clover is initially described as a stout cart-horse who is considerate and motherly. This is shown in the novella’s fourth paragraph when, as the animals are gathering to listen to old Major speak, she protects some ducklings who had walked in unaccompanied by their mother.
Her biggest downfall was that she experienced great difficulty whenever she attempted to fully think things out for herself and even more in communicating the thoughts that she had. Like Boxer, she accepted that the pigs were the teachers and leaders. However, she wasn’t nearly as trusting of the pigs as Boxer was as Clover did have a keen sense for when hypocrisy was taking place. If she could have fully formulated those thoughts and communicated them, this novella might have turned out quite different.
Clover also had some deep thoughts from time to time. Shortly after Napoleon had a number of animals slaughtered, Clover looked over the animal farm with tear-filled eyes as she lamented that this was not the future that the animals had envisioned when they threw Mr. Jones and his men off of the farm.
With that said, Clover did still believe that things were better then they had been under Mr. Jones even though this did not appear to be the case by the novella’s conclusion.
Clover also often realized that commandments had been broken but then blamed herself for misremembering them. For example, she believed that the fourth one, “No animal shall sleep in a bed,” was violated by the pigs and asked Muriel to take a look and read to her what it said. After she does – “No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets” – Clover is confused as she thought that it did not include those final two words. However, they are right there, so she told herself that she must have been mistaken.
She also remembered something about a commandment not allowing killing. This occurred a few days after the mass slaughter had taken place. So she once again asked Muriel to help her out and again was surprised that she did not remember the final two words of the commandment, “No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.” Unfortunately for her, it never crossed her mind in either situation that the two words at the ends of those commandments could have been added later.
