22 pages • 44 minutes read
Carl StephensonLeiningen Versus the Ants
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1938A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Pampas Stag
The pampas stag is a symbol of mortality and a reminder that grandiosity, both physical and imagined, cannot protect Leiningen from forces of nature beyond his control. Leiningen watches the ants devour the stag within six minutes, leaving behind only its skeleton. The ants consume the animal as Leiningen himself might have hunted and consumed it. This alerts the planter to the fact that, despite his sense of supremacy, he, too, is only mortal flesh. The ants can eliminate his existence as easily as they did that of the stag. In a moment of panic, when he’s nearly consumed by the ants as the stag was, Leiningen hallucinates and revisits the memory of the dying animal, envisioning his fate. The image stirs his will to survive and to triumph over the ants that seek to destroy him.
A Herd of Saurians
Leiningen casually references the saurians when telling the District Commissioner that nothing, not even this imaginary herd, could send him away from his plantation. Saurians are a suborder of lizards and birds that exist up to present-day. Leiningen is likely thinking of the modern-day saurian’s now extinct dinosaur ancestors that would be more fearsome than the lizards who also run away from the horde of ants. Leiningen’s reference indicates his underestimation of the ants and his overestimation of his own strength in the face of potential catastrophe. The reference also subtly hints at a fear of extinction.
The Plantation
The plantation is both Leiningen’s purpose for being in Brazil—it is the source of his social and economic power—and it lies at the crux of his identity as a colonialist. When he destroys the plantation to drive away the ants, thereby saving himself and his workers, he realizes that his material gain and wealth are less valuable than the will to live. When Leiningen makes the decision to flood his plantation, which has already been devoured by ants, he simultaneously destroys his livelihood and the source of power that separates him from his men. This desperate act temporarily equalizes them.
