Short Story Snakes By Danielle Evans

Family Snakes
In Danielle Evan’s short story “Snakes,” Evans molds a pattern that families seem to fit, a mold imbedded with guilt. This pattern symbolizes a snake, the sneakiness, the lies that are told throughout the story, and finally, how it can eat someone alive. Evans tells this story through the eyes of a nine year old girl named Tara, who comes from interracial parents. Family is supposed to be there to love and support each other, but sometimes people lie in order to persuade one into doing what they see fit, turning into a snowball of lies that soon consumes ones mental being. Although people lie and ignore the guilty conscious that comes along with lying, sooner or later that guilt will slowly slither up behind them and drive one
After Alison and Tara ran off into the woods and relaxed by the lake. They both told each other stories that they have always wished would come true. They imagined those stories coming true by acting them out in an imaginary play scene. They sang “Kokomo at the top of [their] lungs over and over again” (Evans 39), wishing that they were somewhere else than at their grandmothers house. They would run off into the woods to get away from their grandmother Lydia, to get away from all the controlling rules and regulations that she has placed over the girls. However Lydia did not place harsh rules on Alison, which might be because Alison is the favorited granddaughter. After a while of the girls running off, Lydia finally had it. Lydia did not want the girls “disobeying her and running off” (Evans 40), anymore. So Lydia scared the girls by stating that “snakes are in the lake… [they] love water” (Evans 40). Lydia tells this little white lie so that she can manipulate the girls into thinking that the only safe place is to stay inside of that once luxurious house. However, Lydia’s little white lie spiraled into an occurrence of both day and night terrors for Tara. Tara could not sleep by herself anymore because of a night terror that caused her to toss and turn right off the top bunkbed and smack her head hard onto the solid cold floor. Startled, Alison was the one who ran to Tara’s side. When Lydia heard the loud
Evans does not write about a Ball python, Burmese python, or any breed of python. She writes about a snake that has natty hair, hair that sticks in the direction of which it was brushed. A snake with skin dark in contrast, but soft to the touch. Eyes that are not red, but brown. Eyes that not only cry, but feel pain. The name of this snake is Tara, a little girl who is biracial. A girl who leaves a mark on every oath of which she encounters. Tara is the guilt that so many people feel. Evans is interested in the way that “people define themselves in concert with or against other people in their lives” (Moustrakis 2), which is what she does with Tara. Guilt can build up and up until it cannot stack any higher in a person’s heart. Guilt can break a person, no matter how big or small someone is, no matter how much one apologizes for their actions, and no matter how hard one tried to stay away from hurting another person. Guilt will always be there and this is the theme that Evans portrays in her short story