Two Bad Ants
Two Bad Ants is a 1988 children's book written and illustrated by American author Chris Van Allsburg.
Plot summary
The title characters, while journeying through a human home, decide to exploit a sugar bowl—full of sugar cubes—on their own rather than taking one sugar cube for themselves like the colony's queen. The two ants decide that instead of taking one sugar cube for themselves and leave for their ant hill, they will live in the sugar bowl forever and "eat the tasty treasure forever". But during daylight, the ants are shoveled up by a giant sugar bowl spoon. They experience misadventures: they land in a cup of coffee, almost get toasted on an English muffin, fall into a sink, get threatened by its garbage disposal unit, and are nearly electrocuted when they enter an electric outlet. Chastened, they rejoin a line of ants carrying sugar cubes back to the colony.
Interpretations
In Philip Nel's analysis, a conflict between the book's plot and its illustrations leads to artistic tension. While the ants' return to the colony suggests "a victory for the bosses" and the narrative could be considered a "capitalist parable", the comparatively huge appliances in the kitchen, which terrify the ants, imply conspicuous consumption. Nel likens the book's resulting ambiguity to the works of Magritte.