Reflection on John Steinbeck's The Snake "The Snake" is a short story written by John Steinbeck. It tells about a biologist, Dr. Phillips and a mysterious woman. One day while Dr. Phillips was doing an experiment on starfish, a woman with black came into his room mysteriously. She came to him just wanting to buy a male rattlesnake from Dr. Phillips, the biologist. And then she asked Dr. Phillips to feed the male rattlesnake a rat so that she could watch the whole process. Then at last the women left him and never came back again. John Steinbeck's short story is somehow hard to understand. There are a lot of discussions about it too. It is really a highly symbolized story, though the central meaning is not very obvious. There are a lot of questions aroused in readers' minds. Who is the mysterious woman? What does she really want? Why does she behave so strangely? And so on. Some people think that the woman is like the snake or is the snake. She is mysterious and evil. She is the lust to Dr. Phillips, and disturbed his life from then on. Dr. Phillips could not resist the lust from the woman or the snake so his life had been changed since then. Does this mysterious woman just play this role in the story? Is Dr. Phillips only the victim in the story? Is there any deeper meaning behind the lines and the characters? Why does the woman appear suddenly and how can she ask Dr. Phillips to do whatever she wants and he does obey? Doesn't the woman have anything with the man in the story? According to C. G. Jung, a Swiss psychologist-philosopher, every archetype can be designated as the shadow, the persona and the anima. The shadow, the persona and the anima are structural components of the psyche that humans have inherited; the... ... middle of paper ... ... mysterious woman, or the struggle between the conscious will and the unconscious world of Dr. Phillips. That is to say, it is the struggle in the anima of Dr. Phillips. The whole battle is caused by the apparition of the woman, therefore, it is safe to say that Dr. Phillips' anima has been projected on the woman with a lot of strange behaviors. The woman has played the role as the anima of Dr. Phillips. John Steinbeck's short story "The Snake" is an excellent story, though it is very short and the plot is simple. There must have much more meaning behind the words and the story. It is not possible to figure all of them out in such a small essay, and the understanding in this essay is only based the reader's personal understanding and limited knowledge. Therefore, it is impossible to be perfect or to be rich enough. It is open to all the suggestions and corrections.
“The Rattler” is a story that is written by Donald Beattie that expresses a survival and protective tone to persuade readers to side with the man that killed the snake in order to protect a larger community of animals and humans. Beattie is presenting the story to a large group of people in attempt to persuade them. Beattie uses imagery, simile, and pathos to develop a root of persuasion and convince the audience to reanalyze the man’s actions.
Archetypes are designed to be universal and original models after which similar ideas are patterned. They include, but are not limited to images, recurring themes, symbols, ideas, character types and plot patterns. Archetypes can be expressed in myths, dreams, literature, religion, fantasies and folklore. They are an effective means utilized to evoke strong associations, emotional or physical, to the reader or audience. Carl Jung, a psychiatrist and analytical psychologist, created the term ‘archetype’ and claimed that they could also be applied to literature. Jung recognized that there were recurring and universal patterns in many stories regardless of their cultural or historical period. As a result, he hypothesized that the human conscious contained a collective unconscious relatable to most people. In literature, it is important to recognize archetypal patterns because they hold special symbolic meanings that are representative of universal ideas similar to how the image of a mother represents love and sacrifice and how the color white represents purity and innocence.
The female characters in Young Frankenstein and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest are, stereotypically, satiric and parodic renditions of oppressed or emotionally unstable feminine personalities. The theme of the treatment of women is not only played out in the external relationships the women interact within but also in the basic mentality and roles they embody within their personality. The women of Young Frankenstein add a comical element to the film which a direct contrast to the insignificance of the female in Mary Shelley’s novel. The women of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest are either almost terrifying when thinking of the potential evil lurking just beneath the surface or effectual props in the healing of those who need it.
Neher, A. (1996). Jung'S Theory of Archetypes: A Critique. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 36(2), 61-91. doi:10.1177/00221678960362008
A situation is presented that causes the readers a predicament. In the “Rattler” a short story a man must make a decision to kill a snake, or let it live taking in consideration his obligation to protect his farm and the people and animals in it. The author first presents the man with his point of view making him favorable to the readers showing his conflict in which he has to complete a duty despite his own morals for the protection of everyone else. The author then presents the snake as an innocent in the situation by using details that show the snake is not an evil being but rather a harmless victim. In “The Rattler” the man’s encounter with a snake leads him to do an obligation that he later feels remorseful for. The
When Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, our country was just starting to recover from The Great Depression. The novel he wrote, though fiction, was not an uncommon tale in many lives. When this book was first published, the majority of those reading it understood where it was coming from-they had lived it. But now very few people understand the horrors of what went on in that time. The style in which Steinbeck chose to write The Grapes of Wrath helps get across the book's message.
“The Rattler” explores the conflicts between man and nature that seem inescapable. The narrator is taking a walk through the desert when he comes across a rattlesnake. After some thought, he decides to kill it and proceeds to violently slaughter it with a hoe. The snake fights back when provoked, but fails. The author makes the reader feel sympathy towards the snake and empathy towards the man through the personality of the snake, the point of view of the man, and the language and details regarding the setting.
...f the bad that is going on in her real life, so she would have a happy place to live. With the collapse of her happy place her defense was gone and she had no protection from her insanity anymore. This caused all of her blocked out thoughts to swarm her mind and turn her completely insane. When the doctor found her, he tried to go in and help her. When the doctor finally got in he fainted because he had made so many positive changes with her and was utterly distressed when he found out that it was all for naught. This woman had made a safety net within her mind so that she would not have to deal with the reality of being in an insane asylum, but in the end everything failed and it seems that what she had been protecting herself from finally conquered her. She was then forced to succumb to her breakdown and realize that she was in the insane asylum for the long run.
Besides, when the psychiatrist confronts her, he describes her as, “small, agitated, and dark, her face shaded by a disarray…Her eyes were very black, and she seemed to emit a musk. The psychiatrist hated her”. Besides, he was very angry and wanted to leap and attach the women.
The third section of the story returns the reader to the calm security, but then quickly sends the tone of the story into a frenzy. These constant tone changes show the reader how strong and resourceful the woman is, but it also shows us how she can be thrown into a panic easily. We come to have little confidence in the main character's ability to react well if a dangerous situation arises.
The effect the reader perceives in the passage of Rattler is attained from the usage of the author¡¯s imagery. The author describes the pre-action of the battle between the man and the snake as a ¡°furious signal, quite sportingly warning [the man] that [he] had made an unprovoked attack, attempted to take [the snake¡¯s] life... ¡± The warning signal is portrayed in order to reveal the significance of both the man¡¯s and the snake¡¯s value of life. The author sets an image of how one of their lives must end in order to keep the world in peace. In addition, the author describes how ¡°there was blood in [snake¡¯s] mouth and poison dripping from his fangs; it was all a nasty sight, pitiful now that it was done.¡± This bloody image of snake¡¯s impending death shows the significance of the man¡¯s acceptance toward the snake. In a sense, the reader can interpret the man¡¯s sympathy toward the snake because of the possibility that he should have let him go instead of killing him.
John Steinbeck’s novella, The Pearl, is written as a parable, which allows the reader to interpret its themes in their own way. It can take place in any time period, with any setting, and using any protagonist. The themes Steinbeck used throughout his book are universal and can applied to anyone’s lives. Its contrasting portrayal of good and evil creates a clear understanding of themes such as greed, illusions, and humanity and reason versus animalism and instinct.
The beginning of the novel introduces the reader to Esther O'Malley Robertson as the last of a family of extreme women. She is sitting in her home, remembering a story that her grandmother told her a long time ago. Esther is the first character that the reader is introduced to, but we do not really understand who she is until the end of the story. Esther's main struggle is dealing with her home on Loughbreeze Beach being torn down, and trying to figure out the mysteries of her family's past.
Lawrence uses figurative language in order to present his ideas of societies expectations of a man. Lawrence changes the structure and style of “Snake” in order to highlight the struggles of the narrator. Specifically, when writing about the snake he uses repetitive and flowing words. He also uses traditional devices like alliteration, for example “and flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips.” The use of these technics gives the snake an almost human like feel that the reader can connect to. At the same time, Lawrence writes about the log used to hurt the snake in a different style creating such a contrast between the snake’s description and the log. The words describing the log are much different, “and threw it at the water trough with a clatter.” The changing styles helps emphasize the internal struggle the narrator is experiencing as he tries to figure out if he should do as society dictates and kill the snake like a man or do as he wishes and leave the snake in peace as his guest at the water
... Nature, including human beings, is `red in tooth and claw'; we are all `killers' in one way or another. Also, the fear which inhabits both human and snake (allowing us, generally, to avoid each other), and which acts as the catalyst for this poem, also precipitates retaliation. Instinct, it seems, won't be gainsaid by morality; as in war, our confrontation with Nature has its origins in some irrational `logic' of the soul. The intangibility of fear, as expressed in the imagery of the poem, is seen by the poet to spring from the same source as the snake, namely the earth - or, rather, what the earth symbolizes, our primitive past embedded in our subconsciouness. By revealing the kinship of feelings that permeates all Nature, Judith Wright universalises the experience of this poem.