Week 3 Story: The Snake and the Boy

The Snake and the Boy

    There was a snake and a boy who were best friends. All his life everyone had always hated the snake. When he met the boy, the boy was scared too and he ran away. While he was running he fell down a hole and got stuck. The snake was the only one who knew and raced to help. The boy was terrified of the snake and so he screamed. He continued to scream or help but no one could hear his cries. The snake waited until the boy fell asleep and at nightfall set up a contraption where he was able to get the boy out of the hole when the boy woke up he was laying outside of the hole where was stuck with the snake sleeping in front of him. The boy seeing the snake picked up a rock and held it over the snakes head. There was growling in the woods and a wolf came out and said let me kill him. No one likes him and he will be better off dead. The boy looked down at the snake knowing that he was saved by him and he took the rock and he threw it at the wolf and said "I like him he is my new friend." The snake who had just been woken up by the commotion and felt happy for the first time that he can remember.

After a month had passed the boy and the snake became best friends. They would do everything together however the father of the boy hated the snake and would try to make the most of any mistake that the snake would make and always try to turn the boy on the snake but he wouldn't do it he felt indebted to the snake that had saved his life. One day while the snake and boy were playing and the boy stepped on the snakes tail. Pain shot through the snake's body and his reflexes made him recoil and lash at the boy who was his best and only friend biting him and injecting him with a dangerous venom that killed him almost instantly. The boy's last words being It's okay I'm not mad I am sorry. The snake felt instant regret at the sight of his actions and let out a deep his feeling such remorse. The father came out with a knife and when seeing what the snake had done he became full of rage but didn't come to the snake and instead cried. The snake went to the father and asked him to kill him. He told the father that he had lost his only friend and killed the father's son. The father said no but the snake showed his fangs and the father fell back. The snake then began biting himself over and over until he died leaving the father alone. 

"White-lipped Pit Viper, Trimeresurus albolabris showing its fangs in Kaeng Krachan national park" by tontantravel is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Authors note:

The story of the man and a serpent was a short story of a snake killing a boy and being killed by a man. I thought that the snake didn't have to always be portrayed as a bad guy and a wicked animal so I decided to make the snake live in a world that believed him to be wicked in reality he had feelings and wants. He saved the boy but was a slave to his instincts but when he had seen what he had done he killed himself because he had killed his only source of happiness. Making the story focus on the snake and not the man I believe the perspective shift is important to face bias.

Bibliography

The Fables of Aesop by Joseph Jacobs (1894):: The Man and the Serpent,