I really enjoyed reading through The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist
Bees. It was interesting to see how the dynamic of the story played
through, and how important human characteristics were to the story, despite
humans being mentioned so infrequently throughout the tale. When reading
through the first few lines of the story, I thought the story would be a typical
tale in which a young person learns a few life lessons, but I never imagined
that it’d suddenly switch and tell it from the side of wasps and bees. The
development of these insects is really incredible. Although they are simply
bugs, they are portrayed as being able to read, write, and speak, even having different
dialects and languages of their own. In addition, they have their own set of beliefs,
practices, and ways of executing plans, even reaching the point of establishing
political controls. They’re so organized! Reading this through reminded me a
bit of Chicken Run, and although the bees didn’t
rebel against humans, that concept of working in secret and communicating like
humans and learning from others was really interesting.
I really like your connection to Chicken Run. I connected this piece in a similar way to Animal Farm by George Orwell, as I thought the animals in both pieces were symbols of human problems. The author's were making statements about human nature through the personification of these animals and insects. In Animal Farm, the pigs think they are better than the others, so they slowly change the laws of their society to favor them more and more. Even though these were animals, they were describing human nature.
ReplyDeleteThe stuff you said about the insect societies working in parallel to humans rather than directly interacting really struck me. A lot of western sci-fi features a white male protagonist, while aliens are generally relegated to minor roles. (There's also a really weird phenomenon where black actors are often cast as aliens or generally non-human sci-fi things like robots or giant clouds or whatever, but that's a whole other issue). We tend to either focus on the relationship between animals and humans, or fully immerse the audience on one side and only broadly characterize the other society. It's interesting that there are parts from the point of view of both insects and people, yet they only marginally interact.
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