Leiningen Versus the Ants

“Leiningen Versus the Ants” is a story about colonialism that depicts colonial rule favorably. This is unsurprising, given that Carl Stephenson wrote the story in the 1930s, when European nations still possessed colonies abroad and reaped immense economic benefits from their landholdings. Today, we would apply a postcolonial reading to the story, addressing the issues of race, gender, and language that the narrative raises.

Stephenson positions Leiningen in contrast to the planter’s indigenous workers, who are depicted as docile and primitive. The efficacy of Leiningen’s Western scientific methods contrast with the natives’ ineffective shamanistic recipes. Stephenson also describes Leiningen’s antipathy toward women in a couple of instances to underscore the protagonist’s masculine prowess.

Leiningen is the only character in the story who is presented as a fully-realized individual. The predominant way in which Stephenson accomplishes this is by giving Leiningen the power of language. He is the only character who has the full power of speech, both through dialogue and the third-person omniscient narrative. This exemplifies how colonialism allowed for the master’s tongue and discourse to replace or supersede that of the indigenous peoples whom they conquered. Conversely, when the indigenous people in the story express emotions, particularly fear, their experience is collective, like that of the ants. Arguably, by attacking Leiningen’s plantation and viciously overwhelming him at the end of the story, the ants could be expressing the repressed will of the indigenous people, who have been made docile as a result of Leiningen’s economic and political power, as well as his awe-inspiring command of the environment.

The story fits into the horror or suspense genre, but it explores the real fears that Europeans harbored toward the people and lands that they colonized in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Countries in South America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania were places in which disease and fearsome creatures were actual threats. Stephenson also uses Leiningen to reiterate the lack of respect that the colonizers often had for the native inhabitants of their colonies. Although Leiningen is a relatively kind colonialist, he, too, views his workers as lesser men. He has a paternalist air, believing that he knows better than they about their own country. He takes it upon himself to protect them from the ants, believing them to be incapable of fending off the threat. However, he also has no qualms about letting the men work for him day and night while he rests and eats.