Danielle Evans's When Life Slithers Back

When Life Slithers Back Danielle Evans’s fictional story, “Snakes,” portrays the miserable childhood of the narrator when she visits her maternal grandmother. The narrator became the victim of racial discrimination from her own grandmother, which led to a painful childhood experience. Throughout the story, the narrator seems to be quite attached to ancient tradition, like the mythological vision of the Burmese Python, talismans as an ultimate cure of evil, and other ritual actions performed by the narrator that actually deepened the story. In the story, Tara, a nine-year-old biracial girl is often abused by her white grandmother. Before Tara’s visit to her grandmother, there were some family issues that aroused the animosity between her mother and grandmother. So, Tara’s grandmother, Lydia, has difficulty in accepting Tara as her granddaughter and abuse her with utmost hatred. Not only does Tara …show more content…
The jaw of the python unhinges, allowing it to ingest whole prey many times its size. These uncanny feats associated the snake with the relentless death dealing aspect of nature” (“Snake” 194). The destructive creature Python always tries to harm others. Similarly, the unusual relationship between Tata’s mother and grandmother took the nature of a python. Lydia’s utmost hatred towards Tara’s mother can be revealed when she said: Tell your mother that when you leave a place for twenty years, a lot changes. They've got these pythons that love water. Some idiots imported them as pets, and now they're taking over. A Burmese python can grow to be the size of the both of you put together, and can get you from twenty feet away. Sometimes they lay eggs in drainpipes, and the baby python will travel through the sewer pipes and come right in through a hole in a wall and eat their prey alive. (Evans