In this short story, the main character, Allal, grew up at a hotel where his mom gave birth to him and left him a few months later. When he was old enough to go to work in the town he was laughed at and called the “son of sin” because his mother had left him behind. He earned enough money to live in a small house where no one was nearby. One day in town he watched an older man struggle to gather up his snakes that he had dropped while the other townspeople yell at him that they don’t want snakes in their town and to get them out. Allal helped the man gather his snakes and offered for him to stay the night. While the man is sleeping, Allal lures one reddish-gold serpent, which he finds particularly beautiful, out of the sack with milk and kif paste and hides it outside. After the man leaves for the next town Allal trains the snake to come out whenever he wants it to. One night, he summons the snake again with milk and kif paste after he has also taken a few spoonfuls of the paste and washed it down with tea. By the time the kif paste had taken over Allal’s mind, the snake was rested between his head and shoulder so Allal fell asleep looking into the snake’s eyes. The next morning when he wakes up he realizes he switched bodies with the snake.
One paragraph that I found to be significant is on page 226-227, particularly when it says, “It seemed to him that in this way they hoped to make him into a shadow, in order to have to think of him as real and alive” (227). It seemed to Allal that by the townspeople calling him the “son of sin” and laughing at him would make him a shadow to them. A shadow is real, but also something that is just there. He was trying to go about his days unnoticed by being in town as little as possible and avoiding the townspeople as much as possible. Therefore, he turned into a shadow to the townspeople; he didn’t have a life to them, he was just there. This paragraph sets up Allal’s role in the town as an outsider and sets up perhaps why he agreed so easily to allow the man with the snakes to stay with him for the night. The man was also instantly out casted as much as Allal because he brought snakes into the town. In the end, when Allal switched bodies with the snake, he probably wanted to experience what it would be like to be someone else since he was made fun of and excluded from society almost his whole life.
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When I was reading the story, the shadow comment definitly stuck with me too. However, I think Allal could have changed his reputation if he really tried. The old man states "Snakes are like people. You have to get to know them. Then you can be thier friends". Instead of him running away from people all the time, he should of tried to prove to people that he is more then just a shadow. Congrats! You did a really good job!
ReplyDeletei agree with Jthmz1o8, Allal was so use to being ridiculed and left out by the toen people he did not reallt focus on trying to get to know the town people or let the town people get to know him. I feel he wanted revenge on the town people for treating him as the son of sin, and thats why at the end when he switched bodies with the snake he bit a couple of the town people that came in to kill him! I think allal and the snake had a lot in common. i say this because when the town saw allal, they did not want him around because they felt he was born in sin because his mother was so young when she had him, also they never tried to help him or do anything to get to know him. Just as the snake, immediately when they saw the snake they did not want the snake in town.
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