59 pages • 1 hour read
Jeff ZentnerThe Serpent King
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Sins of the Fathers
Jeff Zentner explores the relationships between parents and children through several lenses and perspectives, by creating characters that belong to three very different families. He investigates how parents’ choices influence their children’s lives, and whether children can ever escape the shadows of past actions that do not even belong to them personally.
Dill’s grandfather, whose name Dill carries as a symbol of tradition and continuation, went mad after his only daughter died from snakebite. Living in a small, rural environment meant that everybody witnessed the unusual form his madness took, as Dill’s grandfather hunted snakes, skinned them, and wore their skins as ornaments to commemorate his daughter. Dill’s father, Dill Sr., grew up to become pastor of a Pentecostal church that believes in snake handling, poison drinking, and speaking in tongues as signs of divine blessing.
Dill Sr. is a con artist and a man of dark charisma, almost a cult figure. Justice finds him through his arrest for possession of child pornography, for which he is imprisoned. Dill was under the direct influence of his father as a child; the town knows him as the son and grandson of the Serpent Kings. Dill’s journey through the novel is to come to terms with his familial legacy, to embrace the fact that he cannot change his lineage, and to find a way to claim a future that he controls.
At the beginning, Dill’s father still controls his mind, even though he is not physically present. Dill subconsciously waits for his father’s approval or blessing, even though never really received either. Furthermore, Dill is afraid that his grandfather’s madness might show itself in him; he notices he also has a dark streak, like his father and grandfather, which leads to his depression after Travis’s death. Through religion and psychological abuse, his parents have enslaved him, but at novel’s end, Dill finds the strength to escape into an independent future.
Lydia’s parents’ decision to come back from bigger cities to live in Forrestville feels like a burden. She believes that she does not belong in such a backward place and that she would have had many more opportunities growing up in a city. Zentner references the Greek myth of Perseus (Perseus’s grandfather receives a prophesy that his unborn grandson will one day kill him, so he locks his daughter in a barrel and throws her into the sea. Zeus visits and impregnates her, and she gives birth to Perseus. Once old enough, Perseus competes in the Olympic Games, throws his discus into the audience, and hits and kills his own grandfather). Like Perseus, Lydia feels destined to suffer because of her father’s choices. This prophecy seemingly confirms itself when Travis is murdered, and her father realizes that small town life can’t keep danger away from her.
The alcoholism and abusive behavior of Travis’s father clashes with his son’s gentle and imaginative nature. Because of his father’s incompetence and incapacitation, the lumberyard they own barely makes any money, and as a consequence, Travis has no hope of going to college or doing any other job except to continue his father’s work.
Heavily influenced by their father’s ideas of masculinity and strength, Travis’s older brother Matt enrolled in the army and died in Afghanistan, fighting a war of which he had no real understanding. Like Dill, Travis attempts to get away from the toxic influence of his father, rejecting his way of life for something better. There is tragic irony in Travis’s death; regardless of the choices he made, his family history determined his fate. His death is also a terrible and cruel punishment for his parents.
The Ephemeral Nature of Happiness
Despite their growing maturity, teens experience so many things over which they have no control, and they cannot always influence things to go the way they want. Dill would be happy to be able to make music and be in a relationship with Lydia. At the beginning of the novel, both of these things seem unattainable, primarily because of his family situation. Dill finds it difficult to enjoy writing worldly, popular music, because his father enjoyed his religious songs—the one tie they shared.
Thanks to Lydia’s persuasiveness (and her gift of a secondhand laptop), Dill begins recording music that he likes to perform, and he becomes an instant hit on the internet. These first steps give him courage to pursue his dream. It takes another outside incident to make Dill take the first steps to showing his love to Lydia: Travis’s tragic death, which sends both his friends into a spiral of grief and depression. They realize that they only have so many moments and that they should make the most of them.
Lydia at first imagines that happiness will come only from leaving Forrestville and becoming a famous and appreciated fashion and culture journalist, blogger, and writer. She refuses to let herself entertain thoughts about her feelings for Dill. Only after she starts dating him does she fully realize where true happiness lies, as she learns to enjoy the moment.
Travis’s murder robbed him of space to grow and find peace and happiness in his imagined future: sharing a house with Dill and writing his own fantasy novels. Still, Travis found happiness in his enjoyment of the Bloodfall series (his meeting the author in Chapter 24 shows how simply and beautifully happy he could be). At the time of his death, he was also falling in love with his online friend, Amelia; unlike Dill, Travis immediately recognized a good thing and he was willing and able to embrace it. Even though he died much too soon, Travis understood happiness, knew how fleeting it was, and enjoyed the moments he had with his friends.
The Power of Friendship
From the outset, the author presents Dill, Lydia, and Travis as close friends. They’re three people who have come together from different backgrounds yet share the same values. None in with their culture, and each feels determined to live as unique individuals. Even though the dynamic between them changes through the novel, their bond remains strong, even when tested. Dill and Lydia begin the novel with unresolved romantic tension. Even though they often fight, they value their relationship too much to let it go easily. As they embrace romance, they still place emphasis on their friendship and offer support to each other, especially after Travis’s death.
Of the three, Travis remains the most stable and dependable friend because of his gentle character and his reluctance to enter into arguments. Since he appreciates the value and power of friendship the most of all, he treats Dill and Lydia accordingly. In his communication with Amelia, he shows that he is a dependable person who primarily shows kindness and caring. Travis understands Dill’s touchiness and knows how to approach him, and Dill appreciates this greatly.
All three protagonists go through turbulent times due to their age, their home situations, and the social and cultural environment in which they live. They support each other through all of these difficult situations, and they know each other so well that they instinctively recognize the best way to react in most situations. The author symbolically depicts the power of their friendship in Chapter 13 when Dill, Lydia, and Travis go to The Column to leave written messages to commemorate their life in Forrestville, and their friendship. Dill and Lydia honor the memory of their friend by leaving his favorite book on his grave and by carrying his legacy in their hearts forever.
The Influence of Local Culture on Personal Development
The novel’s setting plays a significant role in the development of its plot, and the relationship between the environment where the three protagonists grow up and their psychological and emotional development becomes a major theme.
Forrestville, Tennessee, is a small town in the southeastern U.S. It bears the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a founders of the Ku Klux Klan and a Confederate general. Tennessee belongs to a region commonly referred to as the Bible Belt because of the prevalence of evangelical Protestant attitudes, which often create political, economic, social, and educational conservatism.
The families of the main characters Dill, Lydia and Travis, all come from this region. This heritage, in turn, influences each protagonist. Dill’s father was a pastor in one of the Pentecostal churches that sees snake handling, poison drinking, and speaking in tongues as signs from God. As depicted in the novel, Dill’s religious upbringing infused him with an enormous sense of guilt, especially about testifying against his father when he was accused of possession of child pornography. On one hand, Dill feels pressure to behave as his parents and his religious upbringing demand, but on the other, he wants to be free from such constraints, to make his music and live independently, without fear.
Travis comes from a poor family of lumberyard owners. His father is an alcoholic with a lackluster work ethic. The uneducated family’s values come from the religious teachings of their church, the Original Church of God, another variant of evangelical Protestantism. Yet Travis’s father behaves abusively in spite of his religiosity, and Travis feels an overwhelming need to distance himself from his family’s legacy and violence. Travis, who is tall and strong yet gentle and kind, instinctively rejects toxic masculinity and misogyny because of its emphasis on negative emotions—but also because of the illuminating presence of Lydia.
Lydia’s educated parents have steady professional jobs and income. They live in Forrestville by choice—not because they never had the opportunity to leave town, as is the case with most other people. Dr. Blankenship, Lydia’s father, is a dentist, an enlightened, educated man who teaches his daughter the value of kindness, balanced opinion, and nonjudgmental behavior. His influence helps Lydia see the bigotry and hypocrisy that exist in the school system, and she uses her insight to help Dill and Travis rise above their fears and misgivings, and search for a better life. The author demonstrates that even though the influence of birthplace is strong, people can learn to balance out their cultural heritage with education and individual growth.
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By Jeff Zentner
