Literary Techniques Used In The Rattler

The author's literary techniques used in "The Rattler" portray a feeling of sadness and regret. A human has come across a snake, in the snake’s natural habitat. For the sake of human safety the snake must die. The reader becomes sympathetic for the man and his choice to save himself and others. The man also shows a sense of humility when he chooses to leave the rattlers on the snake. He could have chosen to keep these as proof of his heroic actions, however he chose to spare the snake’s own self-respect as if he had lived, ” I did not cut the rattles off for a trophy; I let him drop into the close green guardianship of the paper-bag bush.” One literary technique used is the structure of the piece. The author uses a structure that pulls the reader into the setting of the story. The story “The Rattler” creates a setting that creates the appeal by eye but also supports the sadness and remorse of the man. As the story reads through it creates a transition that focuses on what action is going on in the story. The most significant part of the story is the way the story ends. The last lines of the story read, “Then for a moment I could see him as I might have let him go, sinuous and self-respecting in

The story is told from the omniscient first person point of view. The man has come across this snake while he is out on a walk through the desert. Both the man and the snake had no intentions of harming the other at first, “My first instinct was to let him go his way and I would go mine…”. Then the man puts into perspective that he needs to be the protector of the other people that live with him, “But I reflected that there were children, dogs, horses at the ranch, as well as men and women lightly shod; my duty, plainly, was to kill the snake”. The use of the first person point of view helps to portray the sadness and sorrow of the man, and overall to appeal to the pathos of the reader by going after their