ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -by Henry David Thoreau. Please Note: The Battle of the Ants is not a stand-alone essay. It is excerpted from Thoreau’s Walden Pond, Chapter 12: Brute Neighbors, presented here as a convenience to students and instructors.

Detailed explanation-2: -“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” “For my greatest skill has been to want but little.”

Detailed explanation-3: -One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly.

Detailed explanation-4: -The story is about government and war and depicted by ants battling to the death. “The legions of Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with all the dead and dying, both the red and the black, ” the ants represent humans struggling for freedom and power.