https://oxfordamerican.org/oa-now/rattlesnakes-at-my-door
"It is the shortest story in American literature: a rattlesnake appears, a man
kills it, and he is celebrated as a hero. This scenario is so well understood
by readers of both fiction and non-fiction that it barely needs writing. A hero
can be made and evil vanquished in two or three sentences. Often, the killing
is not even a part of the action, but a story told by a character to establish
character. From Stephen Crane to Joan Didion, the bodies pile up. The act is
never questioned, the morality clear, the point succinctly made. The ubiquitous
threat of rattlesnakes is a trope that even children learn from their formative
books:
Jody moved through a tortuous dream. With his father beside him, he fought a
nest of rattlesnakes. They crawled across his feet, trailing their rattles,
clacking lightly. The nest resolved itself into one giant snake, gigantic,
moving toward him on a level with his face.
—The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Though the rattlesnake that bit Jody’s father is immediately shot, though Jody
later acknowledges that his father moved carelessly in the brush, it remains a
threat. There are evermore rattlesnakes—under bushes, behind rocks, waiting in
our cars, in our dreams, in our books—to kill. No matter the circumstance,
particularly in the Southern literary tradition, encounters between
rattlesnakes and humans are nearly always a zero-sum game. Someone will always
end up dead—sometimes a person, more often the snake. With apologies to
Faulkner, whose final scene in “The Bear” is a shining exception, neutral
encounters are rare, even with characters who are themselves weak, uncertain,
and unjustly pursued."
Via Kenny Chaffin.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
