The Serpent King

From Chapter 31 onward, the perspectives alternate between Dill and Lydia, who are trying to come to terms both with Travis’s death and with the concept of death in general. Until his death, they were teenagers facing some difficult situations, but their philosophical talks about life and death were abstract and not rooted in personal experience. Travis’s death changes all that, and it also changes Dill and Lydia irrevocably. Their new grief is hard to handle, especially for Dill, who is already depressed about his family’s lack of support. 

Travis’s passing also provokes questions about religion and faith; neither Dill nor Lydia are sure what to believe in. Dill expresses an almost blasphemous thought: God might have created the universe, and it proved too much for Him to handle. Dill’s early religious indoctrination is competing with a more independent way of interpreting things. Lydia’s attitude to religion comes from a family that is more liberal and openminded, so her response to Dill’s question of she believes in God is secular and human: “I want to. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t” (265). For the first time, both openly question assumptions in a way discouraged by their culture, and these thoughts are influenced by their grief over Travis’s death and by the environment in which they’ve grown up.

Travis’s death has changed the whole community. Lydia’s father mourns not only the loss of a young man full of sensitivity and promise but also a fear that his choice not to purchase all of Travis’s firewood led Lydia to experience death at such a young age. The bookstore owner, Mr. Burson, says: 

I’m tired of watching children perish. I’m tired of watching the world grind up gentle people. I’m tired of outliving those I shouldn’t be outliving. I’ve made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery (276). 

Like Lydia’s father, he has attempted to create a universe where bad things have a lower probability of happening, but he also understands this is impossible because the world is random and cruel. 

The person most affected by Travis’s death is his mother, whose sons have both died senselessly. While Travis’s father found solace in thinking about Matt’s death in terms of his sacrifice for the country, the author never discusses his mom’s perspective on Matt’s passing. Upon Travis’s death, however, her grief and sorrow free her from the ties that bind her to an abusive husband, so she is able to leave town, alone and in deep mourning, but going forward into a new form of existence. 

Chapters 33, 34, and 35 chronicle Dill’s spiral into a profound depression, caused by the confluence of many factors: his family life, his lack of prospects, his struggle with identity both within and outside of his family, and his unexpressed feelings for Lydia. The final blow is Travis’s death, just when they have made a good plan to rent a house where they could live on their own and nurture their creativity. Dill feels unable to write music, and he shuns company, even Lydia’s. He struggles for the right to live his own life and determine his own destiny. 

Dill has a strong fear that he will become the next Serpent King and that the madness that started with his grandfather will color his life and take away everything meaningful. Again, he has no support from his mother, and although Lydia tries, she is too young and inexperienced to know how to help him. His confusion peaks in Chapter 35, when, as he watches the train in Bertram Park, he thinks “about whether he had anything left to lose—if he had any reason left to stay. No” (294). As he contemplates jumping into the river where he was baptized, the memories of his father’s approval wash over him, reminding him once again of the bitter reality of having to deal with life without his father’s affirmation. The author juxtaposes this memory with another, more vital one: the look in Lydia’s eyes as he sings in the talent show. 

At the end of the chapter, Zentner utilizes a trick sentence: “Then he stood, gathered his courage, and decided to end this life and take his chances on the next” (296). At first, this statement creates a sense of dread and new shock. It soon becomes clear that “this life” means the old life Dill has led so far, shackled by his history, and that “the next one” will be one where he fights to build his own separate self, unbound from his past. 

In an unusual structural approach, the author utilizes Chapters 36 to 40 to describe the romantic coming together of Dill and Lydia in a way that fractures the experience into their two perspectives like glimpses of an eye. After they have made the first steps in his application for college, a moment happens when they are tired enough and vulnerable enough to allow their feelings to show. Chapters 37, 38, and 39 are very brief, so that the readers feel a sense of breathlessness that the author replicates from his characters, as they experience their first kiss and romantic touch of hands. By utilizing this technique, Zentner brings us directly into Dill and Lydia’s minds and hearts, and we follow closely as their thoughts swirl in an explosion of emotions and sensations. 

What follows is another task that Dill and Lydia have to perform, which is to learn to navigate a budding romance that Lydia wants to keep secret. More significantly, “the next life” that Dill has entered means not only being with Lydia but also leaving his job at the grocery and starting to work for Lydia’s father. Additionally, he learns that MTSU has accepted him, and his creativity bounces back. Travis’s untimely death started an avalanche of changes that make it possible for Dill to transform his current existence into something new, where promise can now become a reality.