Muriel
The white goat, and the farm's reader. She reads better than the dogs, spells the commandments out loud when Clover asks her to, and used to read scraps of newspaper to the others in the evenings.
To be told what is written, and to say it accurately. She is asked three times to check the barn wall, and she reads out exactly what is on it each time, without comment.
The book
At a glance
- A white goat, and the animal the others ask to read the wall
- Better than the dogs, worse than the pigs
- Hauling stone from the quarry in a governess-cart with Benjamin
- Chapters I to IX
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeMuriel is the white goat, introduced in one clause of the procession into the barn on the first night, between the two cart-horses and Benjamin the donkey. She becomes important because of an accident of literacy. The pigs read perfectly and the dogs read only the Seven Commandments; Muriel reads somewhat better than the dogs and worse than the pigs, and she is willing.
That makes her the animal Clover fetches whenever she suspects a rule has been broken, and so she is the one who says out loud, three times in the book, that the wall does not say what the farm remembers it saying. She spells out the commandment about beds and finds two words on the end of it. After the executions she reads the one about killing and finds two more. A few days after a broken ladder is found at the foot of the barn wall at midnight, she is reading the commandments over to herself and notices two more words on the rule about drink.
Otherwise she works. She yokes herself with Benjamin into an old governess-cart to haul stone from the quarry, and she charges the men with Snowball at the Battle of the Cowshed. Her one recorded outburst is a single word: when Squealer announces that "Beasts of England" has been abolished, Muriel is the animal who cries "Why?"
How the book draws them
- How the book describes herIn one word. Orwell calls her the white goat on the first night and adds nothing else about her in ten chapters. There is no size, no age, and no mention of horns either way.
- ReadingShe could read somewhat better than the dogs, and used to read to the others in the evenings from scraps of newspaper she found on the rubbish heap. It is the closest thing to a free press on the farm.
- The Fourth CommandmentClover, who thought she remembered a definite ruling against beds, fetched her to the barn wall. With some difficulty Muriel spelt it out: "No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets." Clover had not remembered that it mentioned sheets, but as it was there on the wall, it must have done.
- The Sixth CommandmentAfter the executions Clover asked Benjamin to read it and he refused to meddle in such matters, so she fetched Muriel instead. It ran: "No animal shall kill any other animal without cause." Somehow the last two words had slipped out of the animals' memory.
- The Fifth CommandmentA few days after Squealer was found stunned beside a broken ladder and an overturned pot of white paint at midnight, Muriel was reading the commandments over to herself and noticed that the rule about alcohol also had two words nobody remembered: "to excess".
- The workShe and Benjamin yoked themselves into an old governess-cart and did their share of the stone-hauling from the quarry, and she rushed the men with the sheep and Snowball in the second wave at the Battle of the Cowshed.
- WhyWhen Squealer announces that "Beasts of England" has been abolished by special decree, Muriel is the one who asks why. She is told that the song was a longing for a better society, that the society has now been established, and that the song therefore has no purpose.