Ants

Of all the lines of prose I've read over the years, these written by Ernest Hemingway in "A Farewell to Arms" are the ones I most often recall.

Once in camp I put a log on top of the fire and it was full of ants. As it commenced to burn, the ants swarmed out and went first toward the centre where the fire was; then turned back and ran toward the end. When there were enough on the end they fell off into the fire. Some got out, their bodies burnt and flattened, and went off not knowing where they were going. But most of them went toward the fire and then back toward the end and swarmed on the cool end and finally fell off into the fire. I remember thinking at the time that it was the end of the world and a splendid chance to be a messiah and lift the log off the fire and throw it out where the ants could get off onto the ground. But I did not do anything but throw a tin cup of water on the log, so that I would have the cup empty to put whiskey in before I added water to it. I think the cup of water on the burning log only steamed the ants.

It is, of course, an existentialist's view of the world in which what one does or, in this case, does not do of his or her own free will, forms the essence of that person.

Hemingway made no judgement of whether Fedrick Henry was good or evil in his exercise of free will by not lift the log off the fire in "A Farewell to Arms". Rather he used these few lines to define the essence of Henry.

Similarly, I make no judgement on the ethics of deporting illegal residents who might be patients in our hospitals but I do place a limit on knowingly steaming them to death with a cup of water on a burning log. If that be the essence of our country we would leave to our children, I fear our generation has used any free will we might have as poorly as the German peoples in the Third Reich.