Orwell makes extensive use of animal sounds and movements to describe action; his figurative usage turns ordinary description into onomatopoeia. Animal characters are "stirring" and "fluttering" in movement while "cheeping feebly" and "grunting" communications. Old Major, the father figure of the animal's revolution, sings the rallying song "Beasts of England." Orwell describes the answering chorus in a frenzy of onomatopoeic imagery: "the cows lowed it, the dogs whined it, the sheep bleated it, the ducks quacked it." As the ruling class of pigs becomes more human, Orwell subtly drops barnyard verbiage and instead uses "said" for dialogue attributions.
