Revised Paragraph

I have included the new additions/edits in boldfaced print.

A common theme present in the three essays was that though individuals seem to have freedom to do as they please, their actions are greatly limited by societal structure. In Johnson’s The Myth of the Ant Queen, the popular notion that the ants all serve the queen and that the queen reigns supreme in the ant hierarchy is debunked. Johnson states,” The harvester ants that carry the queen off to her escape hatch do so not because they’ve been ordered to, but because . . . it’s in colony’s best interest . . . to keep the queen safe,”(Johnson 194) to emphasize that though it may seem that they(ants) are forced to serve the queen, they only do so or their own personal benefit. In many ways, the ants do not have a choice, if they want the society to function as a whole and live on, they must protect the queen, feed the queen and what not or else society falls. However, Johnson does indicate that individual ants do exercise personal freedoms, so to a certain extent the ants are free to do as they please. Johnson states,” A handful of ants meander across each plank, some porting crumblike objects on their backs, others apparently just out for a stroll,”(Johnson 194) to reaffirm the notion that ants act on their own freedoms as they can go out for a stroll as opposed to work and serve the queen all day. These examples highlight the paradox of individual freedom, while it is true the ants have a choice and the freedom to serve their queen or not, they must serve the queen in order for society and the “group” to flourish and survive. This idea is similar to Lethems idea, “we may console ourselves. . . but the truth is that with artists pulling on one side and corporations pulling on the other, the loser is the collective public imagination,”(Lethem 225) which can be interpreted as the conflict between individual rights (of the artist) and the corporations result in no good for the community. The abuse of copyrights nowadays limits the freedom artists/others have to benefit the public, and while it seems artists may have unlimited imagination, they really do not because they cannot reuse/improve current innovation (that is copyrighted. In the end, this hurts individual freedom, but Lethems argument brings in a different viewpoint by saying the general public suffers the most. As opposed to the analysis of the Ant Queen, the limitations of artists hurts the public, and in the Ant Queen example, limitation of ants behaviors benefits the colony (by providing for the future of the queen and ant colony). Though these ideas show differences in community impact, one idea is clear: people are limited in the actions they can pursue due to societal standards/pressure.

One peer feedback that was consistent in the peer review packets was the fact that my essay paragraphs did not compare/contrast the ideas of the three novels as much. I fixed this in this specific paragraph by comparing ideas of Lethem with that of Johnson and highlighting key differences/limitations as they relate to my argument.
Although it was not explicitly stated, I remembered that I must qualify my main argument, so I added a quote and analysis of Johnsons essay to state that ant colonies do have some freedom and are not always spending their time helping the colony survive. In addition, I changed the topic sentence of my paragraph to help the overall organization of my argument and to make my whole essay more coherent.
Overall these additions help me improve my thesis because it help me qualify my thesis (even though the actions of individuals are largely influences/restricted by society, they still can exercise some individual freedoms/rights), and it helped me compare/contrast ideas present in two different essays (Lethem's and Johnson's essay specifically here).