Snakes

Snakes are central to Celie’s retelling of an Olinka interpretation of Adam and Eve, where the serpent’s meaning shifts from an emblem of racial blame to a creature worthy of reverence. The account does not settle on one explanation of history: some Olinka imagine rejection and violence recurring indefinitely, while others propose that recognizing everyone as kin could end the cycle. The snake stands at the hinge between these possibilities, at once a figure people fear and a being they may claim as family.

Place in the Olinka Account

The serpent enters a conversation in which Celie draws on what Nettie has told her about the Olinka. She connects the story of Adam and Eve with the Olinka account of children cast out for being different, then turns to the question of who the snake represents. Mr. ____ answers that it represents Black people. Celie agrees and describes the Olinka explanation as a history of expulsion that breeds retaliation: those who were cast out, she says, resolved to crush Black people wherever they encountered them, as they would a snake.

That interpretation makes the serpent more than a character in a sacred story. It becomes the name imposed on a people treated as dangerous and disposable. Celie’s account links the biblical story of being cast out and exposed to racial violence, showing how a tale about origins can be used to explain an inherited pattern of exclusion. The comparison is delivered through layers of telling: Nettie reports Olinka thought to Celie, who relates it to Mr. ____. The reader encounters the Olinka account through that chain, not as an independent statement from an Olinka speaker.

A Future of Repeated Rejection

Celie recounts one Olinka view of what will happen after the white people are gone. In this forecast, the rejected children will turn against one another, kill many other people of color, and destroy so much of the earth that they will themselves become hated as the new serpent. The image reverses the earlier accusation: those who once marked another people as the snake will inherit that position in the eyes of their victims. In this version of history, the identity of the serpent changes hands, but the practice of making an enemy into a creature to be crushed continues.

The account also allows for a much longer cycle, in which the earth changes and people alter in appearance across vast spans of time. One group might send away another that looks different, reproducing rejection on a scale that extends beyond the present conflict. Celie stresses that not all Olinka share this expectation. Some believe the cycle can end if people accept one another as children of God, or as children of one mother, regardless of appearance or behavior. The serpent’s place in the story therefore marks a choice between repeating exclusion and refusing the categories that make exclusion seem inevitable.

The Snake as Revered Creature

After presenting the snake as a figure used to describe racial persecution, Celie adds a counterintuitive detail: the Olinka worship it. They regard it as possibly a relative and certainly as an exceptionally intelligent, clean, and slick creature. This change in emphasis unsettles the familiar association between serpent and evil. The snake is not simply a villain in the story or a passive label for an oppressed people; within the belief Celie reports, it can also be an honored nonhuman being, with qualities valued in its own right.

Yet the creature’s meanings remain entangled with human history. Its possible kinship makes the boundary between people and serpent less absolute, while the comparison to a snake also registers the violence of being designated an enemy. The symbol does not erase that contradiction. Instead, the contrast between the serpent as a target of destruction and the serpent as an object of worship reveals that a creature’s meaning depends on the relationships and stories through which people regard it.

Storytelling and Significance

Mr. ____ responds that the Olinka must have a great deal of time to think. Celie answers that Nettie describes them as good thinkers, but says their attention to thousands of years can make it difficult to get through a single one. The exchange brings the grand scale of the Olinka accounts back to ordinary life: their speculations encompass changing peoples and recurring histories, while daily existence remains hard to navigate. Snakes belong to that expansive thinking, but the discussion does not reduce their significance to a single moral lesson.

The telling also preserves disagreement within the Olinka outlook. Celie reports both a bleak expectation that people will keep manufacturing serpents among themselves and a hope that shared kinship can end the process. Against the racialized serpent in her explanation of violence, the worshipped snake offers an image that cannot be contained by that accusation. Its importance lies in this double role: it exposes how inherited stories can authorize hostility, while leaving open a different relation to the creature and to those whom people cast as other.