The Ants’ Revenge
“Eugene! Eugene! Hurry! Sound the alarm!” said the ant on lookout. “Gah,” he sighed, “not again.”
For the sixth time today the angry goddess, Venus, was stomping around all over the poor ants’ homes. She was getting closer, as heavy-footed and loud-mouthed as ever, shrieking about how betrayed she was by her own son, Cupid, for his marriage to Psyche. “He promised he would not marry her! The one girl I told him not to! She will pay for this!”
The ants were nervous as the walls of their home began to shake, and pieces of dirt kept dropping around them. All of the ants banded together and held on tight, holding the walls of their home up to reduce the amount of damage by as much as possible. Though they only stayed like this for under a minute, the stress and anxiety that came from being worried about losing parts of their home made it seem like they were stuck in these positions for hours.
The ants were nervous as the walls of their home began to shake, and pieces of dirt kept dropping around them. All of the ants banded together and held on tight, holding the walls of their home up to reduce the amount of damage by as much as possible. Though they only stayed like this for under a minute, the stress and anxiety that came from being worried about losing parts of their home made it seem like they were stuck in these positions for hours.
As she stomped away, continuing to curse Psyche’s name, the ants began to relax and come out of their reinforced holes. You see, just a couple of days ago there had been a cave-in in one of the main entrance halls, so the ants were more cautious when Venus stomped by now. They couldn’t be too careful, especially with Venus on her rampage that wouldn’t seem to end anytime soon.
Just as the ants were getting back into the swing of their regular daily activities, their scout ant, Jan, came running back with an urgent request. “Everyone! I need your help! Do you want to get back at Venus for making us cower in our own homes?!”
“Yeah!” everyone shrieked back.
“Okay! There’s no better way to get back at her than by helping out the girl she despises the most, Psyche.”
Jan began to explain that the vile goddess, Venus, gave Psyche an impossible task. The task was to separate an enormous pile of wheat, barley, poppy seeds, chickpeas, beans, and lentils by the end of the evening. Though the task was impossible for just one girl, Jan believed that if their group of ants got together and helped her out, they could have everything separated out in no time!
Because an enemy of Venus was a friend of the ants, all of the ants agreed to help out and surely, soon enough, they had everything separated in no time like Jan had said! Psyche was so pleased with their help, and because she was good-hearted, she thanked them profusely. She made them feel so at home, that they almost wanted to stay in Psyche's company, however, not wanting to get caught by Venus herself, the ants quickly scurried away into their homes, feeling good about what they had done. That is, until the stomping grew even more intense over the next few days as the goddess grew even angrier.
Author’s Note: For this story, I wanted to give more of a background for the ants in the story of Venus and Psyche. They played such a small role in the story, so it left most of the details up to my imagination, which I like. I tried to imagine what it would be like living as an ant near people prone to throwing temper tantrums, and this is the story I came up with! My main goals were to give a better explanation of why the ants helped Psyche out, to show things from an ant’s perspective, and also write a lesson about how revenge isn't the best answer.
The original story, Venus and Psyche, is about how Venus gives Psyche the task of separating the pile of food, knowing she won’t be able to. Venus is jealous of Psyche's beauty, and upset that her son "betrayed" her by falling in love with Psyche. Therefore, Psyche was completely innocent and did not deserve to be treated like this. In the original story, an ant was just passing by and felt bad for Psyche, so he called the rest of the ants to come and help. I gave more of a backstory from the ants’ perspectives, and changed their reasoning for helping into revenge.
Book Title: Apuleius’s Golden Ass
Author: Tony Kline
Year of Publication: 2013
Heather,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your story. Especially how you caused it to be from the ants' perspective instead of from a perspective we had already heard about. You were really able to allow the reader to picture what it would be like to be an ant in the situation. My one suggestion for your story, is to maybe add more to the story. Not add more to the plot line but add more in terms of establishing background, and other similar things. But overall, I really liked the story.
Great job Heather! I love how you brought the ants to the forefront of the story. I always think about little ants in their anthills and how easy it is for us big humans to just walk over them, but by doing this we are destroying their whole home and community.
ReplyDeleteIn your story you talk about the task of separating all the grains and sends, I can't imagine. I actually visualized trying to do that and there is no way.
My only suggestion agrees with Meghan above. More of a strict plot line may have helped give the story some depth but I still enjoyed it!
I love your story!! I like how you gave the ants a backstory! I like how you wanted them to help Psyche in order to get revenge against Venus. But it's sad that their plan backfired and Venus was more livid than ever. I really like how this story is from the ant's perspective too. Great job. I really enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteHey, Heather! First off, I'd just like to say that your story was great! It was simple and refined, concise and to the point. The paragraph divisions in your story help to move the story along, giving the reader enough pauses to keep them from zoning out due to long blocks of text.
ReplyDeleteThe format of your blog also aids in granting a simple and clean feel to the story; the black text is easy to read against the white background, and the plain text also lends to the classic feel of the blog. In most blogs, I advise for more "elaborate" schemes and designs, but in yours the plain format works well.
The one thing I might change (for this story in particular) is the image choice. Your story was told from the perspective of the ants, but the image is of the goddess. To further emphasize the roles of the ants, a photo of them rather than another individual would have been more successful.
In any case, you did a great job on both the format and style of this story, so fantastic work!
Hi Heather! I read this story and really enjoyed it! I read your author's note first before I got into your storytelling. I like knowing what to expect from your story. I really enjoyed the changes you made to the story by giving more background on the ants and not making it just about Porsche and Venus.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read this story I could just imagine a little ant sorting all those tiny seeds and beans, how terrible! I cook with them a lot and know how small they are. I love envisioning the little ants all working together to help Porsche. Venus seems like a sure "queen bee" that i would want to avoid. Great alters to your story it was great overall.
Only thing would be agreeing to jessica's comment above. I probably would have changed the image choice. I like to pin from all the story's I use because it sparks my memory of what the story was about, but this image doesn't really encompass the story you told.
Heather, I am glad I had the chance to read the story again. I think that you could have added more to the story by adding more to the characters. Maybe adding a background for one or two of the ants, or adding some description to how the ants particularly behave. For example, you could have the scout ant be an ant who comes up with big ideas all of the time, causing the ant who is first told of the scout ant's idea to be at first exasperated but then like the idea of helping Psyche. While that idea may not be something that you would like to have in your story, something along those lines would help the story improve and grow to be all the much better. I think adding small details similar to what I have suggested all throughout the story would help add so much more to your story.
ReplyDeleteHeather,
ReplyDeleteI thought your story was fantastic. I really enjoyed the perspective that you told the story from. Hearing the story from the ant made it so much more enjoyable to me. I like how creative you were with the whole story, and you had so much to work with here. The whole time I was reading this, it reminded me of the story “The ants go marching”. I don’t remember if that was the exact name of the story, but still. I also really enjoyed reading your Author’s note because it was very informative of what your motive was behind this whole writing. It was also good that you gave a brief summary of the original story so we could see how your thought process unfolded in your writing. You did a great job and I look forward to reading more of your stories in the future.
Heather, great job with this story! I thought you did a great job of setting up the story, especially because you had so much room to come up with your own ideas and ant experiences. So wonderful job at coming up with this creative idea! I thought the author's note really helped me understand that this was a small part of the original story, but you elaborated more on what the ants experienced.
ReplyDeleteOne suggestion that I have is to look at the words you are using and see if you can make it more active, rather than passive voice. For example, you said ...Venus, was stomping around all over the poor ants’ homes. Instead of saying "was stomping" you could say stomped. It just makes it more of an active story that's happening now. Also, I saw you said "cave-in in" within the story, so if you can try to move things around to avoid that double word, that could help the reader too.
But overall, great job with this story!
Heather, great job with your story. I enjoyed how you provided an interaction with animals and humans. Stories like this area always an interesting read. I liked the story's introduction. It provided a great sense of the suspense that is about to happen. I liked how you kept describing the stomping effect through the middle of your story and how scary it was for the ants. I always enjoyed how you brought the ants together as a community. I'm guessing one of the morals of the story is "the enemy of your enemy is your friend," which was executed perfectly within this story. I liked that the ants were tired of Venus' careless behavior towards the homes of the ants so they sided with her enemy, Pysche. Overall, I thought the story was very well written and there were no parts where I had to stop and think due to bad grammar. Good job!
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