A Story I Loved: "The Ant of the Self" by ZZ Packer
- Staff Writer
- 23 hours ago
- 4 min read
The juxtaposition of characters in this story is what I found interesting here, on a first read. A generational conflict, for one: here is a man acting like a boy, and a boy trying to act like a man. The internal conflict within Sturgeon juxtaposed with the conflicts he undergoes throughout the narrative with his father. The starkness of these two moral battlefronts that the men find themselves on. Against the backdrop of the Million Man March- a gathering for Black men to promote the ideals of greater community involvement and personal responsibility, i.e., causes larger than the individual- we see that Spurgeon’s father is failing in all of the meaningful ways. He is thoroughly self-interested. No form of love can seemingly compel him to decency, at least when that decency requires any form of personal self-sacrifice— not the affections of lovers nor even a love that should be considered sacred, or the love between a father and his son.
Yet he is a father, for better or worse, and he is human, for better or worse. He and Spurgeon argue throughout the story, these arguments building up into the greater climax, and though their conflicts stem from particular events, we sense, as readers, that these conflicts are not really about the specific events themselves. They exist in a vacuum of what Spurgeon has resigned to knowing about his father: that he is unable to be a do-gooder, a clinical cheat, not above deceiving his own kin. Eventually he leaves his son stranded, all alone in the middle of a train station. There, he is confronted with an everyday vision of what a father and son should be like: he witnesses a father behaving with tenderness towards his son and feels as though he might cry. We sympathize with Spurgeon, who has put up all the fronts of propriety. Who has guarded himself against all pre-emptive attacks, who dresses neatly and speaks eloquently, because he knows that as a Black man, his outward appearance must be carefully curated at all times in order to defend himself against the racial prejudices of others. Who knows that he cannot be vulnerable, not even with his father, or risk being taken advantage of. He is the “ant” of the self- capable of holding great burden, as the animal famously can carry several times beyond its own weight- but ultimately, still only mortal. We feel that crushing weight of his realization. Of course he is mortal. But up until this point, it feels as though Spurgeon has not yet discovered this.
I return to the quote that builds up the rest of the story- “Freedom is attained only when the ant of the self – that small, blind, crumb-seeking part of ourselves – casts off slavery and its legacy, becoming a huge brave ox.”
That's the crux of it. Do we reject our forefathers entirely? Do we keep trying to progress in a world or a relationship where clearly we are unwanted, where we are treated with ill-disguised indifference and occasionally spite? The progress of the Million Man March acknowledges a long, at times rocky look at the possibility of racial freedom in the country. Yet it also takes pride in the fact of acknowledging that progress has been made, that any betterment that has been achieved has been by the work of many hands. Spurgeon, in a pivotal scene with fellow Black men in a bar after the march, listens with boredom to a spiel about how far the community has come, and the gratitude he is thus indebted to his forefathers. Spurgeon's cynicism is at least understandable. His father, one of many faces in the crowd, is no hero. He knows that his father's reasons for marching are pretty much antithetical to the whole point of the movement itself. He can't help but maybe see his father, then, in other men, yet at the same time, he is looking for a father figure. The tension between that wrestling informs the way he moves through the world, and the way he examines his own identity of masculinity and race. The men mistake his personal feelings towards his father for derision for the movement, and they fight with him. But his own feelings are, in a way, inseparable from the other Black men around him, the ways he has tried and failed and exhausted all of his olive branches for his father. Maybe the scene of him fighting, with the other men, then, is catharsis. Or perhaps it is just a further wound. It's often difficult to tell, in a story like this.
As a writer, Packer's capacity to make her characters feel alive, with their own unique tics, even when they find themselves in typical, everyday situations, is what enchants me about her work, even all these years later. Is this a story about race? Or is it a story about personal identity? It is both, because Spurgeon's life concerns both. Nothing is inseparable- that's rather the point of fiction, and on another note, living. Packer's ability to acknowledge that fluidly is a gift. The rawness of the story is excruciating. It's not even necessarily the dialogue. But the reactions are so human, there is nothing extemporaneous or borrowed about what they are doing. They are following along a well-trod path, and maybe their destinies have been marked all along, by every word they have said, every action they have committed, every spurious time they've tried to fend off their fate. Tragic. Very human, indeed.
Read "The Ant of the Self" here: The Ant of the Self | The New Yorker