Let the Ants Try — Edition Insights

Diction of Detachment

Pohl's word choices consistently undercut emotional intensity. Gordy's wife is reduced to a trace; his children's death is summarized in a single sentence: 'they were not in any pain until the last few days.' The phrase 'that was about all the companionship' dismisses a week of dying companionship with bureaucratic brevity. When Gordy builds a truck garden, the government man 'tossed it into the patch'—a cigarette butt treated as casually as the lives lost. This detachment extends to Gordy's own body: 'leaving gobbets of flesh behind' is reported without exclamation. The effect is a narrative voice that has internalized the numbness of its protagonist.

Dialogue as Evasion

Conversations in the excerpt are marked by fragmentation and refusal. The government man's attempts to engage Gordy are met with flat contradictions: 'The Secretary is dead,' 'The War is over.' Gordy's responses are not arguments but statements of fact, delivered without affect. When the man insists Gordy has a weapon, Gordy replies, 'I haven't got a weapon.' The dialogue circles without resolution, mirroring the breakdown of communication in a post-war world. Later, Gordy's triumphant 'It's all yours... A present from humanity to you' is met with silence from the ants—a chilling non-response that underscores his misreading of the situation.

Description of the Non-Human

The ants are rendered through a lens of alien precision. They have 'camera-like machines,' 'bangles on the foreleg,' and move with 'needle-jawed' claws. Their actions are described in terms of mechanical efficiency: 'stood motionless for a period of time,' 'a signal that he could not perceive.' Pohl avoids anthropomorphizing them; they remain opaque, their intentions inferred only through action. When Gordy is attacked, the ant that holds him is described as 'hairy-legged,' and its injury—'a pulpy eye'—is visceral but not sentimental. The detached observation extends to the machine itself: 'stripped piece by piece,' then reassembled with 'ant-made tools.' The non-human world is both tool and threat.

Structure of Repetition and Return

The narrative moves in loops: Gordy returns to Detroit, returns to the time machine, returns to the primordial bog. Each return is marked by a slight shift—the machine moved in space, the fern trees different—but the core situation repeats. The phrase 'He had made a mistake' echoes earlier doubts, and the final thought 'I can take it back' suggests a cycle of attempted correction. This structural repetition mirrors the story's thematic concern with undoing and redoing, as Gordy tries to reverse his gift to the ants. The ending, though incomplete in the excerpt, implies a recursive pattern where each intervention leads to unforeseen consequences.

Readers should attend to how Pohl uses the gap between Gordy's intentions and the ants' responses. The story's power lies not in its time-travel mechanics but in the quiet horror of a man who, even after witnessing the end of his species, still misjudges the nature of intelligence. The clinical prose is not a flaw but a deliberate choice, reflecting a mind that has compartmentalized grief into action. Consider how the ants' silence speaks louder than any dialogue.