The Rattler Short Story Theme

The author's literary techniques used in "The Rattler" portray a feeling of sadness and regret. A human has come across a snake, in the snake’s natural habitat. For the sake of human safety the snake must die. The reader becomes sympathetic for the man and his choice to save himself and others. The man also shows a sense of humility when he chooses to leave the rattlers on the snake. He could have chosen to keep these as proof of his heroic actions, however he chose to spare the snake’s own self-respect as if he had lived, ” I did not cut the rattles off for a trophy; I let him drop into the close green guardianship of the paper-bag bush.”

At least once in their life, people make a decision, and grow to eventually regret what they have done and reflect on what could have been done instead. In the passage “The Rattler” the speaker recalls the time when he crosses paths with a snake and has to debate whether to kill the snake. The author invites the reader to feel empathy for the man and sympathy for the snake using the point of view of the man, attitude of the snake, and descriptions of the setting.

Sympathy and Empathy are words that are similar but very different in various aspects. Both involve feelings and feeling for something or someone and often can be used incorrectly. These feelings are very commonly felt by readers after reading narratives featuring relatable characters and some poignant subjects. The Rattler is a short story about two different sides, or points of view. The two main subjects of the story are the unnamed man, and the snake who happen to cross paths in a desert and things don’t quite end well for one of the two. In the passage, The Rattler, the writer uses explicit details and descriptions and scenery, in a way, to leave the reader both empathetic for the man and sympathetic for the snake.

Most notably, the “glide of snake belly” is an allusion to a notorious green mamba biting and killing Ruth May (5). Her death provides Orleanna with the strength to leave the Congo and is of enough importance to be addressed in the first paragraph. Orleanna then references the destruction of Kilanga in Judges by a “single-file army of ants” (5). This was the climax of the novel and a major turning point for most characters.

Sykes takes his evilness and spreads it throughout the house. Delia is a Christian woman who tries to keep all evil away from her. The snake that Zora Hurston talks about in “sweat” is like the snake in “The garden of Eden Satan”. The snake represents a fierce and scary creature.

The water snake is a representative of a dream because of its periscope head preparing for an opportunity to achieve its goal. The heron portrays fate because it takes the water snake by its head to kill it instantly and unexpectedly, like fate crushes dreams. The incident with the heron and the snake foreshadows Lennie’s fate, which is also instant and unexpected. Curley’s wife is like the periscope head, preparing for an opportunity to become an actress, until Lennie started petting her hair and killed her. Lennie’s actions were similar to the actions of the heron and the actions of fate.

The description of the catacombs creates a kind of metaphor to hell as they go deeper, which very uniquely symbolizes the evilness of Montresor and his intentions. The sense of smell utilized here also vividly describes the stench and thickness of the air. The descriptions and senses such as smell and taste used give a very real and repulsive feeling to the story and the

After a string of snakes being found becomes strangely to frequent, Nelson, the family helper, believes he is to be the next victim. In order to help calm him down, the Price sisters come up with a plan to catch who is planting these snakes. The plan is to spread ash around to the chicken coup, where Nelson lives, to see the footprints of the guilty. In the morning, they checked their trap and it was sprung. Footprints that matches the local witch but a snake was hiding in the shadows.

The clinging to the death garments- The rigid embrace of the narrow house- The blackness of absolute night- The silence like a sea that overwhelms- The unseen presence of the conqueror worm. 2.

“The Rattler” portrays the narrator’s moral conflict between his sense of duty to other people and his respect for all life through diction and anthropomorphism.

His dread of the figurative characters inside his head allows him to comprehend his general surroundings. The monsters that lived in his head as well as the ‘abandoned house’ mirrors the "monstrous" wrongdoing that has been committed by the grown-ups of Acqua Traverse. After the discovery of the ‘boy in the hole’ his fear of the ‘bogeymen’ becomes a reality after realising that his father has been

Through the use of attention to detail and person point of view, the author of “The Rattler” depicts that sometimes personal duty overrides personal moral values.

What do you conceptualize when you think of a sharp cavern, a volcano, or maybe a gun? Death probably comes to mind for the reason that that is what these objects commonly cause. This quote is filled with the personification of death, as is the rest of the book, but this time is different.

It discusses how everyone experiences death and it should be not be feared but embraced. The lesson teached by nature is explained through the quote “Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature’s teachings, while from all around Earth and her waters, and the

“Death is a distant rumor to the young” (Rooney). The idea of death is often an afterthought to individuals. One does not simply wake up every day of their life and contemplate their own passing or that of another. “The Road Out of Eden”, a short story written by Randall Grace, is about a group of children that face torment from a bully. The children make a rational decision to end their suffering by murdering the bully, their first encounter with death.