It might be difficult to use the word "shattered" given the slow and carefully managed nature of the decline in the animal's conditions. One of the ways that Napoleon managed the animals was by constantly shifting their expectations and managing the flow of information so that their understanding of their conditions and the changes were not totally clear.
The hoped for decline in work is always put off into the future; it will come after the new windmill is finished, and when that project is destroyed, it is easy for Napoleon to blame the increase in work on the destruction rather than on the way the pigs are taking more and more of the resources while doing no work. Napoleon and the pigs organize more and more formal celebrations and pronouncements to distract the animals from their worsening conditions.
And because the changes happen slowly over the course of several years, the animals don't have as clear a comparison between when conditions were good and when they are abysmal, as they are at the end of the book. Because the decline is managed (along with the message) by Napoleon, the animals adapt and struggle to really quantify just how bad things have gotten.
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