5/19/2023 0 Comments Anthill by Edward O. Wilson![]() ![]() He also details how Raff fits into the family patterns and where his personality digresses. Wilson spends nearly a quarter of Anthill tracing Raff’s parents’ ancestry, their mores, and their ancestral codes. His mother comes from an old Southern pre-Civil War family that relishes their family name and their storied past. His father is almost a redneck caricature-a rifle-toting, heavy-drinking, hard-working, flirtatious man. Raff’s own taxonomy is distinctly Southern. Wilson’s central character is Raphael Semmes Cody, a remarkable boy/naturalist when the reader first meets him, and an even more remarkable young lawyer when environmental issues dictate the end of Antill. Best known for his work as a myrmecologist (someone who studies ants), Wilson uses his scientific specialty to draw parallels between the species of his chosen terrain, their behaviors, and their evolution. ![]() ![]() His taxonomy includes uncut old-growth longleaf pine, the flora and fauna, the people who live there, and most of all, the ants native to the region. In its pages, Wilson sorts and classifies, studies, and analyzes, a segment of the Old South that stretches along the Florida panhandle to Mobile, Alabama. I agree that Anthill is fiction, but I would characterize it as a taxonomy rather than a novel in the literary sense of the word. Wilson’s novel look at myrmecology from the Florida panhandle to Mobile, Alabama, fiction as well as fascinating taxonomy. ![]()
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