Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Henry David Thoreau’s masterpiece Walden is full of beautifully descriptive prose, and
at times very seditious writing often masked as simple observations of nature; specifically a
passage from chapter twelve entitled “Battle of the Ants”. “Battle of the Ants” is Thoreau’s
observation of two species of ants fighting to the death; he takes this opportunity to ingeniously
exemplify the ways in which the ants’ brutal struggle for life or death mimics that present in
human warfare. The first paragraph of this excerpt follows Thoreau as he finds three ants
fighting amongst the woodchips, and then expands his field of view to discover that it is fact a
huge war taking place. This discovery is noted as he states it was not a “duellem, but a bellum”,
meaning that he was witnessing a purposeful waged war in the human sense, not merely
creatures fighting over a mate or scrap of food. The ants are referred to as “Myrmidons” which
“covered all the hills and vales” to conjure up images of legions of armored Greek warriors
seeking conquest of new lands. To end the paragraph he gives the example that it was an
“Internecine war between the red republicans and black imperialists” comparing the smaller but
more numerous red ants to the people, and the powerful black ants to the ruling imperial parties
of the day.
Next Thoreau focuses the scope of the story on just a few ants at a time, in the second
paragraph he isolates a few separate combatants and anthropomorphizes the emotions and
motivations for war which he imagines for them. Upon observation of a smaller red ant attacking
a larger foe despite being hobbled it is said “it is evident that their battle cry must be “Conquer or
Die””, Thoreau is alluding to human war, and the demonization, propaganda, and rhetoric which
accompany it. He expands on this point by referencing the ancient Spartan custom of wives and
mothers sending away their warriors, as he imagines the ants’ did, and saying “Return with your
shield or upon it”. Thoreau goes on to ridicule the ridiculousness of human war as a spectator
sport in the passage: “to find that they had their respective musical bands … playing the national
airs to excite and cheer the dying combatants”. At the end of paragraph two he overtly explains
the purpose of his essay when he writes: “The more you think of it, the less the difference” in the
The final paragraph of Thoreau’s essay is centered around two red ants and one black ant
on a small woodchip which he removes from the heat of battle and places under a microscope in
his home. Thoreau gives the example of “ghastly trophies hanging from his saddlebow”, to
compare gruesome human warfare to the still living heads of dead ants which covered the
combatants he was observing on the woodchip. Thoreau also comments, once the black and is
victorious and marching away over the window sill, that he does not know if he will survive the
combat or spend the rest of his days at a “Hotel des Invalides”. He is referring to the everlasting
damage of war upon the combatants and that many will end up as nothing more than invalids for
the rest of their days despite achieving a “victory”. To sum up his sweeping commentary
Thoreau says that “I never learned who was victorious, nor the cause of the war” with such
platitudinousness as to imply that it is really of no importance in human war either, it is the act
itself which holds the attraction of the participants and observers and not the cause or result.
Throughout the three distinct paragraphs of Thoreau’s “Battle of the Ants”, he takes the reader
on a journey through the different levels of battle being waged by two species of ants, and upon
closer examination also derisively shows human battle to be of little more importance.