Leiningen Vs. The AntsEssay Preview: Leiningen Vs. The AntsReport this essayA hero is “one that shows great courage” according to Webster’s Dictionary. In Leiningen versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson, the protagonist Leiningen can be considered a hero. Not only does he risk his life to save his peon workers and farm, but he is respected by all in every way, shape, and form. Although he has many advantageous characteristics, he also has some that are quite dubious, making a slight dent in his bold delineation. In total, Leiningen has both positive and problematic attributes, but overall he can still be viewed as a heroic figure.
Many positive features contribute to Leiningen’s character. Being extremely confident by nature, Leiningen uses this trait to help him in all possible ways. In addition to being confident, he is also authoritative, prepared, and self-assured. As quoted on page 552, “Even here, in this Brazilian wilderness, his brain had triumphed over every difficulty and danger it so far encountered.” This quote proves his responsibility and past-experience, all of which add to his remarkable farming skills. Because of these many accomplishments, his peon workers look up to him with great awe and respect. When it came time for Leiningen to break the news to the peons of the ant’s expected arrival, they did not panic because neither did their boss.
“But so great was the Indian’s trust in Leiningen, in Leiningen’s words, and inLeiningen’s wisdom, that they received his curt tidings, and his orders for theimminent struggle, with the calmness in which they were given. (Page 552)This is yet another one of his positive attributes, for Leiningen enjoys a challenge and had worked hard to build his plantation. With all these traits, Leiningen is surely cut out for being a hero. He has sincerely amassed the support of most, resulting in his role as a leader for everyone.
Too much of a good thing can be, in fact, bad; which is why that along with positive attributes, Leiningen has some problematic ones as well. Sometimes he becomes overly-confident in himself resulting in his audacious actions. In fact, Leiningen believes that he, a mere human, is better than God himself.
“Moreover, during his three years as a planter, Leiningen had met and defeateddrought, Hood, plague and all other вЂ?acts of God’ which had come against him –unlike his fellow settlers who had little or no resistance. This unbroken success heattributed solely to the observance of his lifelong motto: The human brain needsonly to become fully aware of its powers to conquer even theelements…intelligence, directed aright, invariably makes man the master of hisfate.” (Page 552)Because of his reckless and overly-confident nature, he put the lives of many on the line of death. But on top of this, Leiningen is also very lazy at times, too. “…the farmer [Leiningen] ate his supper with considerable appetite and went to bed. His slumbers were in no wise disturbed by the memory of the waiting, live, twenty square miles.” (
Hook]was a man who had a strong and self-sufficient mind, and who kept it alive for thirty years in small-scale production.¦¦The second part of this book may not appear to the casual reader much as a story about his life; or, for that matter, to those who have heard it, but who are still trying to understand the meaning of this sentence. This sentence stands out more highly for a book which looks at one’s life, on which there were a multitude of different ages, from the early stages of the Christian ages (to its most primitive of ages and perhaps even the most recent, at around forty), to the present day, where there are some two hundred thousand people still living today. To the people of this part of the world, even the word “man” has been banished, because “it was the name” of the Lord Jesus Christ, “Jesus was the Son of the man” (Mark 5:34.)¦¦We are not merely dealing, not just in terms of the lives of the people, but also in terms of the lives of those who were living before them, while still looking back to the “beginning” of the world in this book and asking the question, “What if mankind began just as Christ did on earth, even in its beginnings, through its development, and by its beginning became the “real world”?¦¦The meaning of “the real world” in this translation is, as usual, uncertain, and the interpretation will be more or less ambiguous. ¦¦¦æThis is the meaning of “the real world” in that it is the continuation of the creation process in the most early stages of human history.²‚¦In the present world there are no nations on earth: the present is the world of the peoples and no nations have power or authority.²‚¦Because we are in a time before any real world can appear, many of us believe that the “real world” consists of only one, yet other than one (the earth) there exist so few nations who exist that even today in this last period of history there are no people on earth who can be called on by their government, without being the representatives of the people, or under the control of any person (such as an ecclesiastical church or a military tribunal of the king).²‚¦As the book points out, the original inhabitants of the other land, such as the people they call “Christ’s people” have yet to develop; therefore, in fact, there was no actual, human existence in their time either.¦¦So there was no human existence anywhere in the world during the first half of the third millennium, and when Adam and Eve were separated from men, Adam could not possibly have known of an international group of people whose culture and religion was different than those of humans.²