Importance of Love in A Feast of Snakes
A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews depicts a violent, cruel, selfish, profane, coarse, lustful society. Yet somehow, love survives. And love--despite the unbearable pain it inflicts--proves to be the only thing that really matters.
Sheriff Buddy Matlow repeatedly insists to Lottie Mae that he loves her. But his is a frightening, possessive kind of love that must remain secret. Because Lottie Mae is black and Buddy is white, he warns her, "'You know if you tell anybody I love you, I'll kill you'" (35). He rapes her by intimidating her with a snake, then callously says, "'Ain't it a God's wonder what a snake can do for love?'" (38). Buddy is so caught up in his feelings that he seems oblivious to how he is crushing her, and he is stunned when she rids herself of his love in the only way possible--by killing him.
Elfie's love for her husband, Joe Lon Mackey, is desperate and pathetic. He treats her abysmally. Her bad teeth and sagging breasts repulse him. He explodes without provocation; one night at dinner, "She kept staring straight ahead while he stuffed the dripping biscuit down the front of her cotton dress" (11). He physically abuses her, lying to his father that Elfie is clumsy to explain her black eyes and smashed fingers. She even endures his flagrant adultery in their trailer as she stands outside. Joe Lon himself wonders why she doesn't leave him. But she stays, promising to get her teeth fixed and covering her bruises with powder because, she tells him, "'Me'n the babies love you, Joe Lon, honey'" (65).
While love can hurt, the loss of love can destroy minds, hearts, and bodies. When Joe Lon's mother falls for another man, the entire family disintegrates, including her. "His mother had left for reasons of love. . . . And in deserting them had left an enormous ragged hole in their lives" (119). Joe Lon believes that "love seemed to mess up everything" (118), and "he carried it around with him, a scabrous spot of rot, of contagion, for which there was no cure. Rage would not cure it. Indulgence made it worse, inflamed it, made it grow like a cancer. And it had ruined his life" (118). Joe Lon's sister Beeder, who was the first to see their mother's body after she committed suicide, retreats to her room and spends her life watching TV, convincing herself "that she had found a place every bit as good as her mother's" (72). Joe Lon's father, Big Joe, avoids Beeder and devotes himself to drinking and raising vicious pit bulls. Joe Lon himself finally loses his mind, finding relief only when he murders victim after victim in a senseless shooting spree.
This novel is full of people disconnected from one another during what is ironically the town's biggest gathering of the year--the snake roundup. Desperate for human warmth, the characters suffer, alone and lonely, as cold as the snakes they chase. What they really want to catch hold of--what we all really want--is love.
Work Cited
Crews, Harry. A Feast of Snakes. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976.
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