Allal

Allal is a story about a boy who lives his life as an outcast. He is known as the "son of sin" because he was born to a very young woman and abandoned at a young age. He grew up on his own and didn't have a family to live with. He feels more comfortable away from the people of the town and eventually moves to the outskirts of the village. At one point, Allal meets a man carrying a sack full of snakes around town. The man and Allal become friends when Allal helps him recapture his snakes after he drops the bag. Allal eventually decides that he wants one of the snakes and steals it from the man. Allal and the snake then become so close that Allal turns into the snake and lives his life in the snakes body before being killed.
I found great importance in the paragraph where the townspeople yell "Find your snakes and get them out of here! Why are they here? We don't want snakes in this town!" (p. 227). This paragraph develops the theme of people being unwanted. It establishes a connection between Allal and the snakes because Allal has been an outcast all his life, and now the snakes are being rejected also. In a way, it is comparing Allal to a snake and foreshadowing what happens at the end of the story when Allal becomes the snake. It works as foreshadowing because it occurs at the beginning of the story before any of the major events take place or any conflict is resolved. This paragraph In essence, it states that Allal and the snakes are very similar because they are outcasts and not wanted in the town. When Allal turns into the snake, this is displayed fully as the townspeople get so annoyed that they eventually kill what they don't want.