Who’s The Songbird And Who’s The Snake?

who’s the songbird and who’s the snake?

The joke is that adult Snow is going to spend the rest of his life thinking that Lucy Gray was his femme fatale, but actually young Coriolanus was her femme fatale.

At the worst point in her life this pretty boy shows up with a rose & then cares for her as best his limited resources allow. She finds out he’s gone hungry too, that his family doesn’t have much to eat, but he’ll give her what food he has anyway. He risks his life for her, gives her his most cherished memento of his mother. Says and does all these sweet things, treats her like she’s precious. It all adds up and she comes to trust him–when she says trust is harder for her than falling in love!–despite her wariness & believes in him to the extent that she writes him a song with the line saying he’s “pure as the driven snow” (482) & then… 😬

When he slipped up and said he’d killed 3 people instead of the 2 justifiable ones she knew about, it must have been like she was suddenly in a gd Horror movie. Or the end of a Film Noir, when the femme fatale takes her pearl handled revolver out and points it right at the hero’s heart. Her sweet boy transforming into a beast right in front of her eyes.

Who was the songbird and who was the snake? Lucy Gray tells him “I want you to know I don’t really believe you’re here for grades or glory. You’re a rare bird, Coriolanus.” (127) And she liked his singing. “Was that you I heard singing? … I liked your voice.“ (143). It comforted her in an otherwise completely horrific experience. From his pov she was his pretty, sweet songbird who turned into a snake; from her pov, he was hers. I find her pov more convincing, since Coriolanus does the traditional femme fatale thing and "proves untrue,” whereas Lucy Gray was always true to her word.

I super dig the aesthetic, the tragedy, the fact that we get the femme fatale’s pov as he tries to justify himself and pretend Lucy Gray was the one who proved untrue. The poignancy of her falling for someone as they are in the process of becoming someone very different. Because, in the end, he wanted control and comfort more than love and truth.

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madampizzadog

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