8/29/12
Period 2
The Rattler Rough Draft
In the passage “The Rattler” the writer uses details about the man, details about the snake, and details about the setting to lead the reader to feel sympathy for both the man and snake. The detail that shows sympathy for the man is when he’s out for a walk and he unexpectedly comes across the snake. The man’s first instinct was to “let him go on his way” and he would go on his. This shows that the man wasn’t really aggressive and really did not want to hurt the snake. The man then goes on to decide if he should kill the snake or not. But he “reflected that there were children, dogs, horses at ranch, as well as men and women” and his “duty, plainly, was to kill the snake.” His indecision leads you to have more sympathy for the man because he came on to his decision only because he thought it was his duty and if it wasn’t for that he would have let the snake go. Even after killing the snake the man didn’t “cut off the rattles for a trophy” and imagined seeing the snake “as he might have let him go, sinuous and self-respecting” showing that he felt guilty of taking the life of the snake. …show more content…
When the man first comes upon the snake the “head wasn’t not drawn back to strike” and “was not even rattling yet, much less coiled." This was a sign that the snake wasn’t going to attack the man but was merely watching to see what the man was going to do. When the man got his hoe to attack the snake with it “shot into a dense bush”. The snake’s action shows his nonviolent behavior by defending itself another way then just attacking the man. Then the snake “shook his fair but furious signal, quite sportingly”. It’s warning the man that if he continued further he has no choice but to attack. But soon the man “hacked about, soon dragged him out of it with his back