Serpent Imagery and Symbolism - Lura Nancy Pedrini, Duilio T. Pedrini (1966)

"Whether the serpent is the 'founder of Romanticism' is questionable, but nevertheless it is an interesting suggestion. Little research is required...to discover the profound influence the serpent has had on the thoughts and literature of all people since the beginning of time. At times, the snake is regarded as sacred, at other times profane, or sometimes as an object evoking both reverence and hatred, but the snake is rarely considered just an ordinary animal pursuing its own way of existence with no significance for man...The Romanticists were fascinated by the serpent and were interested in its symbolic and imaginative value." - Pedrini, Pedrini (1966)

As probably none of you know, one of my greatest prose projects - several works of varying lengths and at varying stages of completeness and/or development - is a project I fondly refer to as Serpents. In preparation for my efforts in actually putting some ideas down to paper, I've begun to do some more reading. I hope to compile a sort of annotated bibliography for it onto this blog.



The first book is Serpent Imagery and Symbolism by Drs. Lura Nancy Pedrini and Duilio T. Pedrini of Princeton University. It is almost precisely what it says on its cover with the small exception that...

...the cover neglects to mention that the entire book is about serpent imagery and symbolism precisely in the works of Romantic poets and only Romantic poets.

This is not exactly what I was looking for. Also, not being a huge poetry buff, I was less engaged than I had hoped to be while reading a book entirely about serpents.

As I'm not well-educated on the ways of reading books about...reading poetry...I won't attempt to write a great deal of critique or anything that resembles a review. This isn't my aim. I'm working on a project that will inevitably have a great deal of serpent imagery and symbolism, so what's said in this book, while I'm not a Romantic and don't want to be one, is still useful.

The table of contents does a fair job at delineating what, exactly, this book is about. The title will be followed either with a representative quote from that section, or a remark from yours truly. My remarks are in italics. Here it is:

I. Symbolism and Romanticism - this first chapter serves to establish the significance of the symbol as a conduit between the spiritual/intangible world and the physical/tangible world. This is especially important as Romanticism seemed, at least to me, to be a reactionary expression of dramatic and powerful imagination and creativity and emotion against scientific rationality and empiricism...or something similar.

II. The Serpent and Romanticism - "No literary movement has lent itself to a greater expression of symbolism than Romanticism; no animal has lent itself to more symbolical interpretation than the serpent..." (26)

III. Serpent Imagery in the Major Romantics - chapter III subdivides serpent imagery into six sectors, then analyzes examples from poets William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats (always in that order) for each of these categories.

1. Man's emotions
2. Man's physical and mental attributes
3. The whole man
4. Areas and aspects of Man's life and experiences
5. Natural phenomena and man-made objects
6. Pictorial detail

These sectors overlap and since I'm not well-versed (get it?) in the source material, I'll let the following quotes help me out:

"The serpent images of the first five classifications are generally expressed in metaphors and similes. The last classification does not use the serpent for comparison but only for a description of a phenomenalistic world." (38)

"...images are analyzed in light of what they state, not what they imply." (39) - Imagery conveys obvious meaning while symbolism conveys latent meaning.

IV. Serpent Symbolism in the Major Romantics - chapter IV strays from the format of III where each category is discussed in that precise order of poets. Some of them don't have examples in all categories. The categories in IV are subdivided and themselves progress from positive symbolism of serpents to negative.

1. Idealism
1. Imagination
2. Benevolence
3. Pantheism
2. The Fall of Man
1. Serpent as beguiler
2. Woman as serpent-beguiler
3. Materialism
1. Analytic reason
2. Empiricism
3. Sensuousness
4. Man against Man
1. Enmity
2. Literary criticism
5. Institutions against Man
1. Kings and kingcraft
2. Priests and priestcraft

"The reader, then, is permitted to see the Romanticists' view of a world deteriorating from a perfect, idealistic condition of love, innocence, and harmony to an imperfect, materialistic condition of hatred, guilt, and discord." (75) - Astute readers of The Smiling Spider (or of Tolkien or of Norse mythology or of ANYTHING about serpents besides Romantic poetry) will recognize that this link between serpents and materialism, the physical world, etc is very obvious, especially with the strong association of serpents with mineral wealth (GOLD! Dragons hoard GOLD! Serpents are, by nature, voraciously greedy.)

"No animal has lent itself to more symbolical interpretation than the serpent." (75) - I feel as if this exact sentence was used earlier on in the book (it was) but that the serpent is used to symbolize both extremes is a testament to its versatility and its great symbolic value.

Summary and Conclusions - the bulk of this slim book was systematic analysis of the works of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats in the previously delineated categories. But, at the end, there is a bottom line:

"Literature and art, in general, are abundant in symbols because the creative man is aware of the conflict between conscious and unconscious forces." (135) - well...obviously. To go even further, symbols reconcile conscious and unconscious, tangible and intangible, etc...

"...[symbols] probe the unconscious and give to themselves and the world a better meaning of life." (136)

But the real, real bottom line:

"Whether the serpent is the 'founder of Romanticism' is questionable, but nevertheless it is an interesting suggestion. Little research is required...to discover the profound influence the serpent has had on the thoughts and literature of all people since the beginning of time. At times, the snake is regarded as sacred, at other times profane, or sometimes as an object evoking both reverence and hatred, but the snake is rarely considered just an ordinary animal pursuing its own way of existence with no significance for man...The Romanticists were fascinated by the serpent and were interested in its symbolic and imaginative value."

50 Shades of Grey, Christian Grey and Batman and what this book could have been

To be very honest, I wasn’t going to read this book. Curiosity got the better of me and I read it. It was disappointing, over-hyped by people who really loved it and people who really hated it both.

I’m not going to comment on the things that have already been picked to death—Ana is a poor copy of Bella, the minor characters are cardboard cutouts, the relationship is flawed, the intimacy was dangerous, etc. May the mob slay me for this, but I actually thought Christian Grey was pretty cool. He’s a lot better than Edward Cullen, which isn’t saying much. He is fifty shades of fucked up, pretty creepy, but somehow, people in-universe actually like him.

The thing about this book is that it’s overhyped by everyone. It’s not well-written at all, it portrays a dangerous relationship, it was Twilight fan fiction, etc.  I have to put it out there that Christian Grey, for all his faults, is well-planned. There were points in the story where I thought that E.L. James was going somewhere really significant—in their first meeting, Ana observes that Christian is ‘the ultimate consumer,’ which he confirms, and then spends the rest of the book proving wrong, to a certain extent. He’s selfish beyond belief, but he himself is completely consumed by responsibility, and the ramifications of his decisions. There was plenty that could have been done about Christian the capitalist extraordinaire, but unfortunately, nothing.

One redeeming quality about Christian, other than his supposedly rugged good looks, is his humor, which is stupidly good. I’m being serious here. I spent a lot of the earlier chapters wondering who Christian reminded me of, and it wasn’t until he said something about being a ‘dark knight’ that made me think, “Oh, shit, he’s Batman,” which explains a lot. Bruce Wayne is the ultimate consumer, a womanizer, a young CEO, extravagantly wealthy, etc. Like Grey Enterprises Holdings, Wayne Enterprises is a vast private-sector conglomerate helmed by their protagonists, and like Bruce, Christian donates extravagantly to public institutions.

All of this leads up to the one hilariously funny thing that Christian Grey said, that made me think slightly better of him. He borders on sociopath (like Bruce Wayne, my opinion), has been pulled into being a public figure (like Bruce), so it is completely funny when he cuts open the zip-ties on Ana’s wrists and says, “I declare this Ana open!” That was funny. Seriously, I thought that was funny.

The Lord of the Flies, my first Goodreads review

There are some books that you wish you could read for the first time again and again. The feeling of that is so fleeting, and for many books, it is so awesome and magnificent. The Lord of the Flies is one of these books.

I remember that the first time I read it, I was in sixth grade, eleven years old, around the age of the boys on the island. My friends bugged me about reading such a weird book, and that was all good in tenth grade when we read it as a class. The thing about reading TLotF in sixth grade is that in sixth grade, everything is a little bit more frightening, and the reactions you get when you are eleven are more visceral, instantaneous than those you get in tenth, or in university, after you’ve been trained to analyze the text to shreds.

I can credit TLotF to my obsession with underlying religious subtext, religious iconography, the demons and devils in the characters and settings. Reading TLotF for the first time, I was struck with certain horrible things, since the back cover summary told me I should expect Swiss Family Robinson or something. I had a thing for island survival stories. This was when I still thought the CBS show Survivor was about…surviving.

The characters drive this story, and even though we had a foolish tenth grade assignment about drawing the map of the island, we knew that the characters were the focus. The first time around, I rooted for Piggy because he was smart. We didn’t need tenth grade English to tell us his glasses symbolized scientific, rational thought, or that fire meant hope. In some cases, overanalyzing, focusing on the minutiae fed to us by the curriculum killed the story for many people. Go with your gut, sixth grade me said. Maybe sixth grade me didn’t know any better.

I liked Simon and I liked Roger. I hated Jack because he was a bully, but admired the cruel and merciless Roger because (1) I was supposed to be named Roger and (2) sixth graders like the mean bad guy, but not the bad guy that could possibly pick on them at recess. And as the story progressed, the kids divided, the sixth grader realizes, holy crap, this isn’t a ‘what if I were on a deserted island’ story, but rather a model of sixth grade, and, as the tenth grader will realize, a model of society as a whole. There is no winning in this situation, except when acts of God intervene.

The other reviewers have probably picked the social commentary bit of this to pieces, so I’ll tackle the stuff I really got out of this allegory. If you’ve seen Inception, you’ll remember that one core theme is that an idea can take hold and proliferate uncontrollably, that concepts and thoughts are incomprehensibly powerful. We see this in the boys, choir boys many of them, who presumably quickly abandon their original Christian dogma once it appears that God has forsaken them. An almighty and merciful (or merciless) God can be substituted by a beast, the devil, Beelzebub, whatever. A dictator will suffice, if history teaches us correctly. Whatever.

The lessons it teaches an adolescent are very good. While I could have gotten a boatload of symbolism from the story (I actually wrote an in-class essay comparing the boys to fairy-tale and religious figures, which I got an A on) but that is not as useful as the concepts that hide behind the story. What it boils to is a very explicit treatise on human nature, reduced to a few figures that play their roles perfectly. It affirmed my idea that the conch method (in elementary school, we used popsicle sticks, in Breaking Bad, they used the talking pillow) will not work, and that kids, whether they’re reading literature whose themes are over their heads in middle school, or stranded on an island without adult supervision, are good models for how humankind will behave, stripped from their institutionalized knowledge and moral, ethical constraints.

Fridays, "Bad Habits", Joyce Carol Oates, Names

Fridays are good days for me and they bear a good pattern for me. I had early class, then lounged around the engineering library catching up on homework or emails. I went to office hours for my computer programming class with a question, had a doughnut at the expense of the engineering honor society, stuck around for a few minutes, then went off on my own. I make time after 1 to watch my favorite campus acapella group, eat lunch on the grass, and then go into the library.

I usually read my National Geographic on Tuesdays, my Economist on Thursdays, saving McSweeney's for Fridays. Our main library has a grand collection of the McSweeney's quarterlies, and today, I had thirty minutes before discussion, and got the chance to read "Bad Habits," a strange, chilling short story by Joyce Carol Oates.

In senior year, I read "Three Girls" and decided that she was a hero of mine. She's obscenely prolific with her writing, and I almost skipped physics discussion to see her in our library. Almost.

"Bad Habits"

The narrator and her siblings are pulled out of school. Their father was arrested--he is a serial killer called Bad Habits, and the story is essentially a sketch of how his arrest, their family's reaction, and the media coverage change them. It's unsettling and suspenseful, and I am without words. One thing that immediately drew me in was the status of names. The children are referred to by initials until the trial date. The narrator remains anonymous, and the eldest child maddeningly searches for connections between her family and the victims.

Perhaps this is because I had math lecture just half an hour before reading, but I was reminded of some wisdom from my professor: "In mathematics and mythology alike, you must give your enemy a name."

In "Bad Habits," the characters begin only with labels and initials. The father is eventually identified (by his long full name, with initials B.H.) and then the siblings, and then an exhaustive list of the victims. The narrator, stated above, remains anonymous. Name thy enemy. Can we think of it as if she identifies her antagonists as they come? Following her father's arrest, the narrator and her siblings are subject to the neurotic overprotection of their mother, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. The family is a wreck, all because of her father. He is named first.

Secondly, her siblings become plagued with bad habits. Bad habits again. Their compulsions bleed into one another, and they become this writhing mess of unhappiness. Their community, their peers, and even their family members come to loathe them, and, I might guess, the narrator identifies them as enemies as well.

About the victims. The eldest sibling, in her fitfully obsessive paranoia, links each victim to a member of the family, by names, first letters of names, etc. Names again. Can it be that the father named his enemies within his family, and transferred that antagonism onto the people he killed?

That's enough for today. It can be read in McSweeney's 18, if you can find it. One day, I shall be rich enough for a subscription.