The Life of the Insects

Abstract

ictures from the Insects' Life – also known as The Insect Play, The Life of the Insects, The Insect Comedy, The World We Live In and From Insect Life – is a satirical play that was written in Czech by the Brothers Čapek (Karel and Josef), who collaborated on 4 stage works, of which this is the most famous. It was published in 1921 and premiered in 1922. In the play, a tramp/narrator falls asleep in the woods and dreams of observing a range of insects that stand in for various human characteristics in terms of their lifestyle and morality: the flighty, vain butterfly, the obsequious, self-serving dung beetle, the ants, whose increasingly mechanized behaviour leads to a militaristic society. The anthropomorphized insects allow the writers to comment allegorically on life in post-World War I Czechoslovakia. - Summary by Wikipedia. Translated from Czech by Paul Selver.