This story was very reassuring for me, and I wanted to bring it up in class tonight, but it only seemed personally relevant---- that the narrator expressed no ambivalence about whether this incident actually happened. (Contrast with the brief question over whether her father jumped back, as if he 'd seen a snake (ghost?) , and into the path of the Sunbeam truck...instead of suiciding - an important distinction)
When I was younger than the narrator, I had a similar experience, but I was alone, so when everyone returned to the scene to find the snake, and it was gone, I was told that it probably hadn't had happened, hadn't existed, or wasn't as big as I thought it was. But I know what I saw, and if I had been the journaling kind (which I only aspired to, never actualized successfully-- sorry, world of graphic memoir I may never enter) I would have written unequivocally as Bechdel did (for once) without an "I think" or an ellipses ("Saw a snake. Had lunch") Except I would have added the qualifier "HUGE".
Anyway, just to say, it was very reassuring to see this graphic illustration of the extraordinarily sized, seven foot long snake on the east coast, on the Allegheny plateau. Because in my personal history, as memory becomes fictionalized even with the first telling, I always wondered whether a snake of such a size existed, so persuasive was the doubt..
No comment about the psychoanalytic subtext. Just putting my thumb on the page so to speak.
"Because in my personal history, as memory becomes fictionalized even with the first telling, I always wondered whether a snake of such a size existed, so persuasive was the doubt.."
ReplyDeletePowerful and thanks for sharing. This makes me want to write down all the lies I told myself as a kid, the unnecessary things I lied about, the limits that are imposed on us or don't even have to be imposed because the invisible threat of crossing a line is so palpable.
Also,
Could it have been the same snake?
Cursory research reveals that the life span of a rat snake (25 years) might allow that it falls within the realm of possibility that this is the same snake, given Bechdel's age and mine----typical roaming distance patterns aside--- I have also learned that it is only juvenile rat snakes that exhibit the yellow and black markings that I remember...so I have to admit that even if I grew up nearer to the Allegheny plateau, the snake would have had to traveled back in time, as well as great distances to cross my back patio in the mid seventies...
ReplyDeleteStill, it is a provocative question with fruitful ramifications. Thanks Sailor!