Preview

Henry David Thoreau's Essay 'The Battle Of The Ants'

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
248 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Henry David Thoreau's Essay 'The Battle Of The Ants'
The tone of Henry David Thoreau’s essay The Battle of the Ants has a big effect on how the essay is read. The essay is a narrative, telling a story. The story is told in a very calm tone, and Thoreau tells it from a first person point of view in past tense. This makes the story sound like readers are sitting with Thoreau by the fireside one night as he is telling it to them. While it does not make the story very exciting, it makes the essay very interesting. Readers are not glued to the page like they would be if the story had been written in a more excited tone, but the battle of the ants is described with such beautiful metaphors, and in such a way where you could tell that Thoreau was interested in what was happening, that readers cannot
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Antebellum Period Essay
    • 466 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Antebellum Period Essay

    What forces or ideas motivated and inspired this effort to remake and reform American society during the Antebellum years?…

    • 466 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Large Ant Essay
    • 1683 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Large Ant Essay

    Cited: Fast, Howard. "The Large Ant." 1960. Imprints 12. Toronto: Gage Learning Corporation, 2002. 150-58. Print.…

    • 1683 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Henry David Thoreau Essay
    • 595 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Henry David Thoreau Essay

    The great author Henry David Thoreau once wrote, "Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after." Thoreau's quote is trying to express that in life we sometimes try so hard to accomplish things and gain status that we tend to forget what we are really after is happiness. People often believe that certain things will bring them happiness such as money, jobs, and material possessions. However, after they acquire these things instead of feeling contentment they feel a sense of emptiness.…

    • 595 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Analysis Of Thoreau's Civil Disobediance
    • 237 Words
    • 1 Page

    Analysis Of Thoreau's Civil Disobediance

    In "Civil Disobediance", by Thoreau, Thoreau claims that there should be improvement from the government, and that people should fight for it. Thoreau uses paradox, and similes to convince his readers that they should take the initiative to speak up.…

    • 237 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Paret the Boxer
    • 385 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Paret the Boxer

    In conclusion, the sympathetic effect that the passage has is due to the writer’s use of animalistic imagery, diction, and similes. "And…

    • 385 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Henry David Thoreau's Beliefs
    • 73 Words
    • 1 Page

    Henry David Thoreau's Beliefs

    Henry David Thoreau was a environmental scientist, American philosopher, and a poet. Henry David Thoreau’s work has been seen having foreshadowed central insights of later philosophical movements like pragmatism and existentialism. He was a leading figure in the Transcendentalist movement. Thoreau is on of the most Transcendentalists today because of his ecological consciousness, independence, commitment to abolitionism, his thought of peaceful resistance. His poem style and habit of close observation are still…

    • 73 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Similarities Between Thoreau And King
    • 486 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Similarities Between Thoreau And King

    Thoreau starts his essay by condemning his fellow countrymen’s actions, or rather, inaction. They and Thoreau share similar moral beliefs, but they refuse to take any action towards them.…

    • 486 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Comparing Henry David Thoreau And Frederick Douglass
    • 1150 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Comparing Henry David Thoreau And Frederick Douglass

    Henry David Thoreau and Frederick Douglass had two very different ideas of protest. Thoreau’s idea was passive and done individually. Douglass’s idea was active and also done individually. Frederick Douglass was trying to expose the horrible aspects of slavery and Henry David Thoreau was protesting slavery and against the government. However, Frederick Douglass’s idea of protest was better and more effective.…

    • 1150 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Analysis Of Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience
    • 770 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Analysis Of Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience

    Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” inspired a revolution of men to do what is right. His term: civil disobedience, refers to people protesting unjust laws by refusing to comply with them. This process is not just for any laws and practices but ones that cannot be resolved by the Democratic process. In his time, Thoreau referred to slavery and the Mexican-American War. Thoreau found both of these pieces of history to be hypocritical of the United States moral values. The United States stands for the home of the free when, in fact, they enslaved people. He refused to be a part of the government and He showed his civil disobedience by not paying taxes. He was put in jail for this, saying: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly,…

    • 770 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Thoreau's Theory Of Civil Disobedience
    • 485 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Thoreau's Theory Of Civil Disobedience

    In 1968, close to 50 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed by an assassin's bullet. He had given us a decade of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience during the civil rights movement of the 1950’s. While the idea of nonviolent protest was still relatively new, MLK hadn’t invented it; he had been one of a few who pioneered the idea and made it popular. The theory of civil disobedience can be traced back to an essay by Henry David Thoreau by the same name. This theory was adopted and popularized by Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and eventually, Martin Luther King, Jr.. In “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau said that if a law “requires you to be the agent of injustice to another,” you should break that law, rather than be unjust to another person.…

    • 485 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Thoreau's On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience
    • 606 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Thoreau's On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience

    Thoreau says, “If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him and drown myself.” This metaphors sums up most of what he is saying in On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. The person unjustly wresting the plank from the drowning man is the government, and the drowning man himself is the citizens of a government. This is to say that if the government wrongly takes from its citizens to save itself, then the government must first give what has been taken back to its citizens and then the government should fall to its demise. Thoreau’s main point is to say that the most optimal scenario is to not have a government at all because “the only times when government has been useful has been when it has stood aside,” but realistically this isn’t possible, so he suggests to have a better government put in place. One that has minimal power and doesn’t control its citizens. Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience relates to modern times because our government today needs to be put in check and has made many examples of governing people too much.…

    • 606 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Henry David Thoreau's Analysis
    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Henry David Thoreau's Analysis

    They say money drives the world, however may the world be driving the money? Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817. He wrote many famous pieces, Civil Disobedience stands out for its steadfast statements and theories on the government machine. Notably where he writes “Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; and It was certainly no great virtue to obtain it” (Thoreau 231) stands out due to its factual way of explaining how the more money one has the less quality in character he/she has, Because with more money it is easier to obtain objects rather than working for them. Thoreau's statement hold true to reality in examples such as money corruption in government, making an individual's character to…

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Spider Essay - Thoreau
    • 386 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Spider Essay - Thoreau

    Thoreau admires the spider because its imagination is allowed to go wild and create and shape it’s views of the world and live in it however it pleases. “If I were confinede to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me.” (917) His world is only limited by his imagination which is one of the traits Thoreau admires most in life and strives to follow the spiders unconscious philosophy on life.…

    • 386 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Logos Ethos and Pathos in "Civil Disobedience"
    • 373 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Logos Ethos and Pathos in "Civil Disobedience"

    Henry David Thoreau uses many examples of the logos, ethos and pathos appeals in his…

    • 373 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Reflection on "Battle of the Ants, " Henry David Thoreau
    • 331 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Reflection on "Battle of the Ants, " Henry David Thoreau

    "The Battle of the Ants" is an excerpt from Henry David Thoreau's "Walden," a non-fictional book Thoreau wrote while living on his own in a cabin in the wilderness for 2 years during the 1840's. Thoreau chose to live this lifestyle in order to find out what really was important in life, in his words, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." In "Walden" Thoreau describes many of the scenes that he is privileged to witness, one being an epic battle between two species of ants, one a small red species, the other, black ants nearly twice the size of their opponents. In immortalizing such a trivial event in his book, Thoreau assigns great importance to it. At the same time, however, Thoreau also personifies the ants by comparing them to humans, and their battles to the battles of the ancient Greeks and Trojans. By making what is such a seemingly ridiculous comparison Thoreau shows the true disdain he has for human wars. Thoreau describes in great detail how at one point, to more closely study the battle, he takes a woodchip that held three of the ant combatants. At the end only the larger black ant was alive, having vanquished his two smaller foes, "Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the remainder of his days in some Hotel des Invalides, I do not know: but I thought that his industry would not be worth much thereafter. I never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war." p.758 This shows Thoreau's view that war never has a true winner, the loser is killed and the victor walks away limping and half dead…

    • 331 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More

Related Topics