The Rattler takes the reader on the mental journey experienced by the narrator. Throughout the song, he travels great distances in his mind's eye, ending up in places he didn't even know were there. An encounter with a snake that poses a threat to his ranch forces the narrator to go against his morals and kill the snake for the greater good. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay At the beginning, he knows very clearly that killing the snake is wrong. His first instinct is to be passive and let the snake go on its way. He has no desire to inflict any kind of violence on this creature. Thinking about the people on the ranch, he decides that he must kill the snake, even though he is reluctant to do so. As the narrator approaches the snake, his mind shifts, perhaps returning to his natural human instincts, which are to kill or be killed. When the narrator attacks the snake, he does so with a newfound fury. He tears the snake to pieces with the hoe and breaks its neck without hesitation. When the narrator first chose the hoe as a method of getting rid of the snake, he did so to ensure that the snake at least had a fighting chance in life. If he had used a gun, the snake would have had no chance of surviving. To give the serpent a fair fight was to give it a proud and noble death. However, by the end of the passage, the man has changed his mental state to one that feels the serpent's death as a victory for himself. He doesn't respect the snake enough to even turn its rattles into a trophy marking the good fight it fought. Instead, the narrator drops it into a bush, dismissing it as nothing. Just as he does so, he sees the serpent as if it had freed him. His primal urges are gone and he once again becomes nonviolent towards the serpent, although it is too late. The narrator's vision of the serpent reveals the final mental transition of the story. It reveals that the man was not fighting a snake; he was fighting against himself. The reason the narrator personifies the serpent is because he sees the serpent as himself. The snake represents the non-violent side of the narrator, the side that the narrator would like to be. At first the snake behaves calmly towards the narrator and only attacks when provoked, showing that it only acts violent when in defense. When the narrator kills the snake, he kills the part of himself that had nonviolent tendencies. In an act of violence, he destroys the part of himself that was passive and gives in to the human instinct to kill. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom EssayThe vision the narrator sees after killing the snake is him thinking about what could have been. If he had let the snake live, his peaceful side might have survived too. He describes the snake as self-respecting as he imagines it leaving with its life. This represents how he could have continued to respect himself if he had not succumbed to the desire to kill. If he had let the snake live, he could have been mentally free just as the snake would have been physically free. However, in killing the snake, he cursed himself with a mental burden that will always be stuck in his mind, just as the snake will forever be stuck in the paper bag bush..