Dragonflies

Dragonflies are a recurring natural-history reference in the women’s discussions, where their long migrations and unusual movement become more than trivia. Ona Friesen describes journeys so extended that only the migrants’ grandchildren may reach the intended destination; she later adds that dragonflies have six legs but cannot walk. The facts make the insects at once concrete and suggestive: they travel, yet not in the ordinary way, and their passage may exceed the lifespan of those who begin it. As the women consider leaving Molotschna Colony, that generational scale gives their immediate decision a quiet, unsettling counterpart.

Natural-History Observations

Ona introduces the migration fact while speaking to the women in the loft. She is beaming as she shares it, and August Epp recognizes the thought as a loose repetition of his mother Monica Epp’s teaching. The detail is therefore carried through relationships as well as through observation: Monica’s words reach Ona, and Ona offers them to the group at a moment when they are weighing their future. August feels an impulse to thank and embrace her. His response recalls their childhood, when he once carried Ona behind the yearling barn as she cautioned him not to crush her ribcage or her heart. The memory connects the present discussion to a longstanding intimacy, but the insect fact remains Ona’s contribution to the gathering rather than merely a prompt for August’s recollection.

Ona’s second observation is more sharply paradoxical. Looking straight at August and smiling broadly, she points out that dragonflies have six legs but cannot walk. The contrast between their many legs and their inability to walk makes locomotion itself less simple than it first appears. The earlier migration account has already established that these insects can undertake a journey whose completion may belong to another generation; the later fact complicates any easy assumption that movement must resemble human travel. The novel does not explain the insects’ biology further, but places the two observations together so that long-distance movement and an unexpected physical limitation remain in view at once.

A Fact Shared, and Received

The women’s responses to Ona’s migration account are deliberately left partly uncertain. Autje Loewen and Neitje Friesen smile back, but August cannot tell whether they are delighted by the scientific detail or simply taking an opportunity to smile and laugh. He suspects that their amusement may also be directed at their male peers, while the dragonflies’ multigenerational journey supplies a more absurdly grand image for their laughter. The scene keeps several meanings in play without settling them: a piece of natural history can be interesting in itself, a welcome opening for shared humor, and a way of making the men’s behavior seem small.

The fact also enters the argument through Mariche Loewen, who rejects the idea that animals and insects lack perspective. She recalls Ona’s account of dragonflies setting out toward a destination they may not reach themselves, with their offspring continuing the journey. Mariche frames this as long-term planning, while allowing that what looks like knowledge might instead be instinctive understanding. Her appeal gives Ona’s observation a second life in the conversation: it is no longer only an engaging fact, but evidence in a disagreement about how other creatures perceive and pursue a course of action. The uncertainty Mariche preserves matters. The text does not claim to establish what a dragonfly knows; it shows a speaker using what has been observed to question confident assumptions about animal minds.

Migration and the Women’s Decision

The insects’ passage resonates with the women’s own impending movement, though the two journeys are not presented as identical. The women face a constrained choice after the men have gone to post bail for the imprisoned attackers. Peters says they will have only two days to organize a response, and that refusal to forgive the men will mean leaving the colony for an outside world the women know nothing about. Against that deadline and threat, Ona’s account offers a different measure of travel: a destination may be distant enough that the first travelers do not see its arrival.

The women eventually agree to leave after dark, choosing a route intended to keep them from being seen as they pass Chortiza Colony and Hiakjeke Colony. August prepares practical provisions for the departure: a map wrapped around a block of cheese, the safe in Greta Loewen’s buggy, onions, soap, and pieces of wood for muddy wheels or kindling. Those concrete arrangements belong to human movement under immediate pressure, not to insect migration. Their juxtaposition with Ona’s observation nevertheless opens a question of scale: a departure can be urgent for those who make it and still be oriented toward consequences beyond their own immediate arrival. The story does not say that the dragonflies represent the women, but their generations-long passage gives the women’s deliberations an image of movement whose meaning cannot be measured only by the first travelers’ lives.

Narrative Significance

Dragonflies return as a small but precise test of whose knowledge counts. Ona brings forward observations that are specific enough to interrupt the meeting’s human concerns, while Mariche turns one of them into a challenge to narrow ideas about animal perspective. August’s response adds another layer: he recognizes the teaching’s path from Monica to Ona and recalls his own childhood closeness with her. Natural history, argument, memory, and affection briefly occupy the same conversation without collapsing into one another.

The insects also unsettle the assumption that movement is straightforward. They migrate across a span that may require generations, yet cannot walk; their apparent direction may involve knowledge, instinct, or something the human speakers cannot confidently distinguish. For the women, leaving is likewise not a simple passage from danger to safety: the outside world is unfamiliar, the route requires concealment, and preparation involves food, tools, and a map. The comparison remains an open resonance rather than a declared allegory. Dragonflies make it possible to imagine journeys whose beginnings and endings belong to different lives, while the women must decide what they can do now, under a deadline, for a future they cannot fully know.