Wednesday, September 4, 2013

A Steady Snail




Contained within the depths of a London garden, Woolfe’s story depicts several descriptive scenes of nature intertwined with human interaction. Although the forces of nature among the story, such as the slow but steadily moving snail, remain in constant motion, the illustrative thoughts of the people cause an almost freezing of time.

The first scene takes place between a husband and wife, with their kids trailing behind. The family remains in motion, walking through the garden; however, their thoughts place them in a psychological stillness. The husband is frozen on the memory of a past love, Lily, whom he had attempted to marry. He compared his proposal to that of a moving dragonfly- “if the dragonfly settled on the leaf she would say 'Yes' at once. But the dragonfly went round and round.” His frustration was halted by his own conversation with his wife. Similarly, his wife was also fixed on a vivid memory of the past. Ironically neither of the couple’s memories involved each other; however, they still appeared to happily, and somewhat subconsciously, carry on conversation.

The second and fourth scenes followed the steady movement of a snail. Woolfe’s descriptive language painted a picture of the nature surrounding the human interactions. The snail was always moving, as well as the flowers, and bugs, and everything else in the garden.

Another memory freezes the thoughts of an old man and his son, who are strolling through the garden with two woman in the distance. The old man’s thoughts were of Heaven and forests in Uruguay. Although Woolfe does not describe the thoughts of the women, we can tell by their complicated dialogue “Nell, Bert, Lot, Cess, Phil, Pa, he says, I says, she says, I says, I says, I says–” that their minds are absent from the present.

Woolfe used the motion of nature as a contrast to the stillness of human thought. It presented a sort of irony that when nature was moving, the people were at a halt. I think the key point lies in the married man’s depiction of the dragonfly. If only the dragonfly were to stop, she would have said yes. This suggests that the progress of the people would come only when nature came to a standstill.




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