to the snake as a dead sibling. In this phrase, she
implies that all creatures of the world are related to
each other. That is, the division between humans
and the natural world is a human construct, not
reality. The reality is that all living things of the
earth share the same elements and molecules. All
are related in a very fundamental way, through the
chemistry of creation. Thus, the death of the snake
for Oliver is the equivalent of the death of a rela-
tive. In his ‘‘MeditationXVII,’’ the seventeenth-
century English poet John Donne writes that each
person’s death diminishes each other person in the
world, since all are connected. Oliver extends this
thought to include all life on earth in ‘‘The Black
Snake.’’
Death
Throughout her body of work, Oliver often con-
siders death: the situation of its occurrence, its
meaning, its mystery. In ‘‘The Black Snake,’’ she
is struck by the passage from life to death of a
snake on the road, hit by a truck. She picks up the
snake and realizes that now that it is dead, it is
useless. She vividly compares the vital movement
of the living snake with the stillness and emptiness
of the dead snake. It is this contrast that so
sharply renders the poem’s message. Quickly,
she makes the connection between the dead
snake and the inevitability of death for all crea-
tures, including humans. She knows that one day
she, too, will suddenly go from being a living
creature to a dead one. Her reasoning leads her
to this conclusion. One could adapt the most
famous of all philosophical syllogisms to reflect
the train of Oliver’s rational thoughts: All
humans are mortal. Oliver is a human. Therefore,
Oliver is mortal.
Nonetheless, at the end of the fourth stanza,
Oliver turns away from reason and its implacable
march toward death. She then instead entertains
the irrationality of life, the belief that somehow,
someway, it will be different for her, that some-
how, someway, she will escape death. She says
that it is this denial of death that is at the core of
every living creature. This belief in life, she
asserts, is what drives the snake to weave its way
through the forest in spring until the very momentBlack phase timber rattlesnake(AP Images)
The Black Snake