Chap­ter V draws the read­er into a vivid land­scape of rur­al life, where farm ani­mals and philo­soph­i­cal mus­ings share equal space. The group’s vis­it to the Home Farm, host­ed by Hen­ry Wim­bush, starts inno­cent­ly enough with a tour of the pig­gery. There, a sow’s sur­pris­ing fertility—a lit­ter of fourteen—stirs admi­ra­tion, while anoth­er’s dis­ap­point­ing five brings forth prac­ti­cal, if unset­tling, com­men­tary about culling. Anne, unset­tled by the cold cal­cu­la­tions of agri­cul­tur­al effi­cien­cy, voic­es her unease. Her reac­tion sets the tone for a deep­er moral con­ver­sa­tion about the worth of life and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. The oth­ers, in vary­ing degrees, engage in this dia­logue, each reveal­ing their core beliefs.

Mr. Sco­gan, with his usu­al blend of cyn­i­cism and satire, uses the farm as a sym­bol of an ide­al state run with mechan­i­cal effi­cien­cy. He pro­pos­es a future where humans are bred and main­tained much like livestock—an argu­ment that dis­turbs some but enter­tains oth­ers. This vision, meant part­ly in jest, lands with weight in an envi­ron­ment so vis­i­bly shaped by birth, work, and use­ful­ness. Denis lis­tens, mild­ly repelled, yet can­not resist the clar­i­ty of Scogan’s log­ic. There’s a sharp­ness to the com­par­i­son that cuts through their casu­al stroll. In this strange set­ting, sur­round­ed by grunt­ing pigs and flap­ping geese, the idea of soci­ety as a farm begins to feel haunt­ing­ly plau­si­ble.

Denis, momen­tar­i­ly dis­tract­ed from the­o­ry, inter­acts with a boar in a rare moment of con­nec­tion. Stroking the animal’s bris­tled head, he feels a flick­er of joy—simple, hon­est, unmedi­at­ed by intel­lect. It’s one of the few moments in the nov­el when he engages with­out irony or analy­sis. The animal’s response, gen­tle and accept­ing, reminds him that life exists out­side of words. This act of kind­ness, though small, lingers with him more deeply than Scogan’s dystopi­an the­o­ries. The farm, despite its harsh­ness, offers moments of pure instinc­tu­al exchange.

As the group walks on, they meet Row­ley, the old farm­hand whose gnarled hands and wrin­kled face tell of decades in the soil. His dry joke about pigs being well-named trig­gers a moment of laugh­ter, but beneath it lies a shared under­stand­ing of toil and decline. He becomes a liv­ing emblem of the human life­cy­cle, stand­ing among ani­mals that have been raised only to be judged by their out­put. His pres­ence brings grav­i­ty to the cheer­ful tour, a sub­tle reminder of the human cost behind rur­al rou­tine. In Row­ley, the chap­ter offers its clear­est link between the per­son­al and the agri­cul­tur­al, the metaphor­ic and the real.

Their path leads next through clus­ters of barn­yard life—geese hiss­ing defen­sive­ly, calves frol­ick­ing on shaky legs, and a hulk­ing bull watch­ing with heavy-lid­ded eyes. Each scene reveals some­thing essen­tial. The geese show ter­ri­to­r­i­al aggres­sion, the calves rep­re­sent hope, and the bull, with its aged mus­cles and pedi­gree lega­cy, embod­ies strength dimin­ished by time. Hen­ry Wim­bush prais­es the bull’s noble lin­eage, but even he admits its days of use­ful­ness are num­bered. The con­tra­dic­tion of rev­er­ence and redun­dan­cy is not lost on the group. The bull, though still majes­tic, is no longer val­ued for what it is—but for what it once could do.

Seiz­ing this sym­bol­ic moment, Gom­bauld breaks from the oth­ers to dra­ma­tize his own phi­los­o­phy. Strik­ing the bull’s flank with a stick—not to harm but to awaken—it becomes a the­atri­cal ges­ture in defense of life’s gen­er­a­tive forces. To Gom­bauld, steril­i­ty is stag­na­tion, and vital­i­ty must be revered. He chal­lenges the group not with argu­ment, but with a vis­cer­al appeal to action and abun­dance. Mary, true to form, finds his impulse brutish, a glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of raw impulse over ethics. Anne watch­es amused, detached yet obser­vant. Denis, caught between admi­ra­tion and con­fu­sion, records it all men­tal­ly for future dis­sec­tion.

This scene, rich in metaphor and inter­per­son­al ten­sion, under­scores the chapter’s deep­er mes­sage: nature’s sys­tems often mir­ror those we build for our­selves. Whether it’s the breed­ing of pigs or the main­te­nance of social expec­ta­tions, val­ue is fre­quent­ly reduced to out­put. Each char­ac­ter responds in ways that reflect their place in the broad­er nar­ra­tive. Sco­gan turns it into a satire of future soci­eties. Gom­bauld roman­ti­cizes it as an artis­tic state­ment. Denis intel­lec­tu­al­izes, while Mary mor­al­izes. And Anne, always the calm observ­er, absorbs it all with­out declar­ing alle­giance. The field becomes a forum where ide­olo­gies clash under the guise of farm talk.

From a read­er’s per­spec­tive, this chap­ter high­lights the dan­gers of sim­pli­fy­ing life to util­i­ty and instinct. Though ani­mals live under nat­ur­al laws, humans wres­tle with addi­tion­al layers—conscience, lega­cy, emo­tion. This com­plex­i­ty is reflect­ed in how each vis­i­tor reacts to the scenes they encounter. Henry’s pride in the farm’s effi­cien­cy con­trasts sharply with Anne’s dis­com­fort and Mary’s judg­ment. These con­trasts aren’t just thematic—they are nec­es­sary. They force read­ers to ask: what sep­a­rates human dig­ni­ty from ani­mal use­ful­ness?

To enrich this read­ing fur­ther, con­sid­er the broad­er eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices. Today, debates around humane farm­ing and sus­tain­able food pro­duc­tion echo many of the same ten­sions raised in this chap­ter. While indus­tri­al effi­cien­cy feeds many, it also rais­es ques­tions about cru­el­ty, waste, and envi­ron­men­tal harm. In that light, the culling of piglets becomes more than a his­tor­i­cal practice—it becomes a win­dow into our evolv­ing sense of moral respon­si­bil­i­ty. Lit­er­a­ture like this offers not just enter­tain­ment, but a mir­ror through which mod­ern read­ers can re-exam­ine every­day sys­tems. By pre­sent­ing these ideas in the lan­guage of fic­tion, the chap­ter achieves some­thing pow­er­ful: it pro­vokes thought with­out preach­ing.

And so the vis­it to the Home Farm, while wrapped in gen­tle coun­try­side charm, reveals itself as a plat­form for deep­er reflec­tion. Its ani­mals, its peo­ple, and even its soil serve as actors in a larg­er moral per­for­mance. Each foot­step through mud and hay invites ques­tions about how we define value—both in oth­ers and in our­selves.