We Are the Ants

In these chapters, Henry struggles to find meaning in the world around him. Henry places more meaning in the past than he does in the future, emphasizing his existential conflict and the issue of the world possibly ending.

One of the ways Hutchinson explores the making of meaning is through the adolescent search for identity. Marcus’s antagonism towards Henry is tied to his struggle with sexuality. Henry is comfortable with being public about his sexuality, giving Marcus an example of the type of happiness that can be achieved if he were honest with himself regarding his sexuality. But Marcus is too suffocated by his reputation and public image to embrace his sexuality. Desiring men posits Marcus as different, which is at odds with his carefully curated popular athlete image. While Henry’s mother is comfortable discussing Henry’s sexuality with him, Marcus’s wealthy family is mostly absent from the narrative. Marcus reveals that he wished Henry had outed him, implying that Marcus is desperate to live authentically but can’t figure out how to. Henry may be ridiculed at school, but Henry is actively committed to being himself, whereas Marcus’s popularity and reputation as a bully is his way of hiding the parts of himself he can’t yet reckon with. Identity formation, especially regarding sexuality, is a rite of passage common to the adolescent experience. In revealing Marcus’s secret shame, Hutchinson humanizes an otherwise unforgivable antagonist. Furthermore, in Marcus, Hutchinson creates a foil for Henry, who feels unhappy at school but is ultimately freer than Marcus. Marcus’s struggle with his sexuality emphasizes themes of LGBTQ+ identity characteristic of Hutchinson’s novels. Lastly, Marcus’s struggle with his sexuality in juxtaposition with Henry’s comfort within his sexuality echoes a relatable identity struggle for Hutchinson’s young readers.

In We Are the Ants, Henry leaves little room for a middle ground. Everything in his life is marked by extremism. The juxtaposition between Marcus and Henry highlights this, as does Henry’s refusal to see the world for its complexities. In Henry’s view, the world is either good or bad, worthy of saving or worthy of destroying, and there is very little in between. Henry also applies this line of thinking to his anxieties about the future. Henry sees the past as more important and relevant than his present or future. He can’t leave the past behind and remains in a cycle of obsessing about that past. But Hutchinson’s message is that the past, present, and future are all equally important. Through Nana’s experiences with lost memories, Hutchinson celebrates the importance of the past. But he also advocates using the past to appreciate the present and the future. By living in the past, Henry cannot see how the new happiness in his present can inform a hopeful future. Ms. Faraci also tries to help Henry see this by sharing her experiences with high school bullies. Even though Henry has had experiences that most people his age haven’t (a loved one’s death from suicide, alien abductions), he has limited life experience because of his age. He doesn’t yet know that life has a way of healing and that what worries him at his age might not worry him later in life.

Henry’s crisis asks the reader important questions about the past: Can you leave the past behind? Should you leave the past behind? Diego and Charlie’s secondary character development are important narrative plots and voices that help Hutchinson explore these questions. Charlie’s character development proves that there’s potential for progress in everyone. Charlie steadily grows out of his juvenile and immature behavior of the past and grows into the role of future father and head of household. He takes an interest in Henry’s well-being and retracts what he’s said about their father leaving because of Henry. This is an important moment between Henry and Charlie because it connects them in brotherly ways they both previously avoided. That Charlie can rehabilitate his relationship with Henry and prove through actions that he’s ready for a life of love and responsibilities provides evidence that living in the past is unnecessary because of people’s potential for change.

Charlie’s character development proves that, when given the opportunity, people can change for the better and create a more hopeful future. Diego also embodies this message. Diego’s dark past is full of pain. The domestic abuse his family endured, the violence he inflicted on his father to defend himself and his mother, and his subsequent incarceration as a teenager are immense challenges. But Diego actively decides to honor his past by making a better present and future for his life. He refuses to allow his past to identify the person he is today. Diego doesn’t leave the past behind; rather, he learns from the past to inform his future. Henry has difficulty accepting the reality of Diego’s past because the Diego he knows in the present is full of joy and peace. This again emphasizes that Henry cannot see the paradoxes inherent in human life—that people can be both capable of violence and full of peace, that the world can be dangerous and painful but also worth saving.

Despite Henry’s nihilism, he helps other people engage in character development. He has an honest conversation with his mother about where her life is, and his mother takes the brave step of changing her life all over again. In quitting her waitressing job and pursuing a career as a chef, Henry’s mother reclaims the pains and joys of her past to pursue a dream free of past resentments. Henry helped his mom see her potential, even though he couldn’t see his own. Henry does the same thing for his grandmother when he decorates her room with pictures of her past. Though Henry is still nihilistic, he wants his grandmother to enjoy the rest of her life, no matter how short it may be. Henry doesn’t see how this point of view demonstrates his appreciation for human life. Instead, he sees Nana’s potential for happiness as further evidence that human life is too painful to endure.

Henry’s search for meaning is tied to Jesse’s death by suicide. Henry needs a reason for the death because if Jesse died for no reason, life is meaningless. This leads to a major plot development in which Jesse’s mother and Henry meet and talk for the first time about Jesse’s death. Jesse’s mother celebrates life because her son could not. But Henry still sees Jesse’s death as proof that life is pointless and, therefore, too frightening to engage in. Jesse’s mother transformed Jesse’s bedroom into a sewing room because she knows how painful the past can be and is committed to not allowing the past to ruin her present or future. Furthermore, it is revealed that Henry’s journal of end-of-the-world scenarios has been a part of his thought process for years, which means that even before Jesse’s death, Henry contemplated the value of human life and the limitations of his ego. What’s more, Henry has been thinking of how the world would end before the sluggers gave him the opportunity to save the world from its destruction. This implies many questions. Did the sluggers choose Henry because of his deep contemplation of human worth? Did the sluggers give him the button because he’s already been thinking about the past? And where does the date January 29 come from? While Hutchinson foreshadows potential answers to these questions, he reveals that Henry’s attachment to the past indicates his anxiety over his own worth and the future. Henry has not had the outside help that Audrey received to confront Jesse’s death. Henry’s self-isolation exacerbates his pain and removes his ability to contextualize and compartmentalize moments of lingering pain with moments of joy.

Though Henry’s nihilism is tied to his youth and his adolescent development, it is also part of a larger, more universal message on man’s search for meaning. Humans have theorized that what sets them apart from other sentient beings is their capacity to search for meaning in signs and symbols and for truth in patterns and their desire to make sense of their purpose on Earth. While other living beings live based on survival instincts, humans have the capacity for philosophy. Philosophical thought necessarily brings people into some nihilism, particularly as a replacement for religious thought. For centuries, people have wondered what their purpose on Earth is, why they exist, and what happens to them when they die. Henry’s nihilism is a youthful model of this more universal yearning. Hutchinson’s novel doesn’t necessarily answer the big universal questions about human existence. Instead, his narrative suggests that there are no answers because there are too many possible answers.

In these chapters, Hutchinson again uses the cosmos as a symbol. Henry compares his family’s relationships to dark matter—a gravitational pull that is inexplicable and outside scientific knowledge but somehow exists. This metaphor highlights Henry’s family as functional despite their flaws and potential for dysfunction. Henry can’t understand his family dynamics, yet they somehow come together. This implies a silver lining in Henry’s life. Though his family struggles with conflict, they still comprise a family. The metaphor also suggests that Henry is gravitationally (and therefore, inherently and naturally) pulled to his family, signifying Henry’s commitment to family and the value of family, even when dealing with family can be difficult.