Eyes in Steinbeck’s The Snake Essay -- Essays Papers

Eyes in Steinbecks The Snake Eyes, both human and animal, appear as a predominant motif in John Steinbecks The Snake. Eyes serve not only a descriptive function, but signify two antithetical modalitys of looking. One mode, bodied by pay back Phillips, is scientific the early(a), embodied by his female visitor, is bestial. Doctor Phillips uses sight to exert control everywhere his environment the fair sexs way of looking proves more powerful, however, by achieving a truer understanding of the incorrect impulses that govern the natural world. The description of Dr. Phillips eyes and the eyes of the woman answer the two opposing worlds they represent. Dr. Phillips, who represents the scientific world, has bats eyes (74). The adjective mild-mannered suggests a lack of emotion the scientific point of view use by the quicken is wholly cheat onional, and thus negates irrational emotion. Dr. Phillips refusal to acknowledge his emotions is unmixed in the phrase, he could not kill an insect for pleasure (80). If the sophisticates mild eyes connote a lack of emotion, then the glitter in the womans eyes suggest excitement, arousal, and an embrace of the irrational emotions that the atomic number 101 denies (75). The description of the womans eyes also indicates the doctors inability to comprehend the womans mode of looking. The story, though create verbally from a third person perspective, is limited to what the doctor sees, thinks, and feels thus, the description of the womans eyes arise from his interpretations. Words such as dark, veiled, and covered (78) are attached to the womans eyes in show to suggest mystery. The womans eyes seem mysterious to Dr. Phillips because her mode of looking is alien to him.In his first interaction... ...heir eyes and body movements the doctor is likened to the rat through his slight build and fair hair (74). The rat sees the snake, but remains unconcerned (83). Just as the rat fails to recognize the je opardy of the snake, Dr. Phillips initially fails to recognize the danger of the woman. He presumes, incorrectly, that she is just like his other visitors. Only too late does he realize that he bottomland neither determine how she sees, nor exert his own mode of looking over her. She forces him to acknowledge a point of view not only different from his own, but more attuned to the essential temperament of the natural world. This temperament is delimit by the irrational urges that exist in every living thing, including the doctor himself. Note1. All references to The Snake are from John Steinbeck, The Long vale (New York, NY Viking, 1938) 73-86.