Caught In The Widow's Web Gordon Grice

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Gordon Grice, author of “Caught in the Widow’s Web” tells a compelling tale about black widow spiders and their dangers. Grice reaches out to readers through the use of modes, literary devices, and diction. In his essay Grice references the eternal question: Why is there evil in the world? Grice uses many different modes throughout the essay to explain his underlying message about evil in the world to readers clearly. In the essay Grice uses description to better explain the black widow spider’s web. Leaves are dispersed in a black widow's web, beneath the leaves there are “husks of consumed insects, their antennae stiff as gargoyle horns” (para. 2). Around them are “splashes of the spider’s white urine, which looks like bird guano and smells of ammonia even at the distance of several feet” (para. 2). Grice's description on the black widow's web uses words that today are considered disgusting like urine and gargoyles which portrays a sense of what the web looks like along …show more content…

Grice uses symbolism to show how the black widow spider represents evil in our world. “The widow’s venom is, of course, a sound reason for fear . . . It produces sweats, vomiting, swelling, convulsions” (para. 11). This quote shows evil through the widows poisonous venom, which is deadly. Grice also states in the essay that “the female’s habit of eating her lovers invites a strangely sexual discomfort; the widow becomes an emblem for a man’s fear of extending himself into the blood and darkness of a woman” (para. 10). Grice uses imagery throughout the essay to convey to readers his view of the black widow spider. Grice also uses metaphors in his essay to explain the life of a black widow spider “performing a gustatory act of that magnitude, but I have seen them eat scarab beetles heavy as pecans” (para. 4). This metaphor explains the black widows capabilities in comparison with something everyone

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