Talk:Leiningen Versus the Ants

The Lady or the Misunderstood Ambiguity?

The page at present communicates that, without ambiguity, the ending of the story has Leiningen on the mend after surviving his heroics. This reminds me of "The Lady or the Tiger" and its subsequent discussion, where the story refuses to state explicitly that the princess knew what lay behind two doors, one of which concealed a lady to whom the prisoner would be married, and the other a hungry tiger. And, hitting heavily on notes of sexual jealousy, and the princess knowing that the prisoner was enamored of the woman behind one door when the princess wanted all his love to herself. And the story refrains from explicitly stating whether the princess directed the prisoner to the lady or the tiger. But the story explicitly refrains from stating that it was the tiger in so many words, and in subsequent discussion the author kept on refusing outright to say in so many words what the story was, while dropping indirect clues that SHOUT OUT, "The princess was enamored of him, and I tried hard to convey that she was jealous of the lady behind one of the doors. So, given that jealousy, do you really need me to explain whether a jealous woman would rather see him eaten by a tiger, or happily married to her rival?"

"Leiningen Versus the Ants" ends with a microcosm of storytelling that is kind of like a miniature "The Lady or the Tiger." To quote:

Leiningen lay on his bed, his body swathed from head to foot in bandages. With fomentations and salves, they had managed to stop the bleeding, and had dressed his many wounds. Now they thronged around him, one question in every face. Would he recover? "He won't die," said the old man who had bandaged him, "if he doesn't want to.

The planter opened his eyes. "Everything in order? he asked.

"They're gone," said his nurse. "To hell." He held out to his master a gourd full of a powerful sleeping draught. Leiningen gulped it down.

"I told you I'd come back," he murmured, "even if I am a bit streamlined." He grinned and shut his eyes. He slept.

This has a much lighter touch; it won't hit you over the head with a crowbar made up of indirect clues if you want to read it as a happy ending in the sense that Leiningen does. But "sleep" is used in many religions and cultures as a euphemism for death; it's in the Bible and some liturgical standard references to e.g. people "who lie asleep in the Lord."

Furthermore, "if he doesn't want to" is in some sense much more ambiguous than it looks. It may seem a no-brainer that Leiningen would want to live, but the entire ending screams "My work on earth is done." He has accomplished his iterated objective of defeating the ants. So yes, if Leiningen *wanted* to, he could clearly could have survived. But it is not a no-brainer to say that recovery and further coffee agriculture is the only serious interpretation to, "He won't die if he doesn't want to."

The foreshadowing and the ending are too ambiguous in a very specific way for me to say that the story is meant to have the happy ending that some readers may want; I more than suspect that the happy ending Leiningen was after was not the one we'd choose.

Thanks,

CJSHayward (talk) 18:00, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Untitled

Awesome story... just awesome. I hope someone makes a defend the castle type game of this story.

-G

1 of the greatest stories ever told--very exciting. It was part of our lit course in high school. The movey really messed it up--it was dull as all get out because it didn't stick to the story at all and instead made up a new story that was painful to watch. They mightily missed a great oppurtunity to do a great film adaptation of a great story-- makes me upset.--Trouveur de faits (talk) 15:08, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Map

if anyone has a map of the plantation put it online

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The original date of the story has to be 1945 or earlier. I picked up a small paperback called "Suspense," which is a collection of short stories presented by Alfred Hitchcock. This story is in it and the book is copyrighted 1945. It has the map on the back cover.

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Hmmm. I did a library search for the date and got inconclusive info. If it's in a collection dated '45, the story's got to be from at least '44, and probably earlier. Not sure how to verify for sure, though.

(As an aside, please sign all discussion page posts with four tildes)RiseAbove 21:37, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

saurian

Saruian is an archaic term for lizard and is a clade of reptiles

What kind of ants are in this story named. I readed this book at school, and i think the story is an phantastic one. A novel like Jules Verne story. It is not reality when billions of soldier ants (marabunta) make robbing trek with measure 20 Square Miles and eat all what crossed the insects.

Philipp Mevius 2006-09-20

Hmmm . . . it's a great, rousing story, but it's a prime example of the notion that human ingenuity can overcome any force of nature and make everything a-OK. I think we've seen some consequences of that. 162.27.9.20 19:23, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Reverted

Reverted to the last version to fix minor vandalism by IP.Wolfhound668 (talk) 03:14, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

wik/de

According to the German Wik, the story was published in gErman in 1937 - so the Esquire version is probably a translation. Also wik/de says the author was Austrian-German. 211.225.37.47 (talk) 04:40, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

ant species

So what army ant subspecies is this? --Joey jumper94 (talk) 01:35, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Recursive citations

Somebody is using Wikipedia itself as a source citation. Please use the sources cited in those articles – not the Wikipedia articles themselves – as your source. A document that cites itself is no better than relying on original research. 12.233.146.130 (talk) 01:59, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

And someone is still doing it. Removing the pseudo-"ref" again. The cited Wikipedia article does not cite any sources, and cannot be used as a source itself. 12.233.146.130 (talk) 00:28, 22 April 2013 (UTC)