Reviews with content warning for Child death - The Serpent King

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The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner

3 reviews

sapphicreaderlucy's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner is a bildungsroman following the lives of Dill, Lydia, and Travis, teenagers living in rural Tennessee. Some of the books main themes are grief, poverty, identity, found family, and resilience. This is dual point of view story and switches perspectives between the three main characters. It begins with the point of view of Dill, who throughout the novel struggles with realizing his identity when so much about him has been associated with his father and grandfather’s history of violent, erratic, and sometimes criminal, behavior. It raises questions about if it possible for someone to transcend troubled histories of their family, which is the major conflict that Dill overcomes by the end of the novel. Travis’s character development has a similar conflict of overcoming (or rather, not overcoming) the negative impact of family member, as Travis’s dad is an alcoholic abuser that is a violent bully towards Travis and his mother. These two stories that demonstrate the results of systemic suffering are then juxtaposed with Lydia, who’s parents are loving parents able to provide completely for all of her needs throughout her identity formation. This gives powerful insight into class differences and the ways in which the idea of “chasing your dreams” that is often tied to adolescence is a privilege that is not easily accessible for people like Dill who face poverty and family debt. In a fight between Lydia and Dill, Dill calls out Lydia’s privilege when she expresses frustration with his life choices, “My choices? It was not my choice to have my dad go to prison and leave my family with a mountain of debt. You love talking about choices, don’t you? Pretty easy when they’re served up on a platter,” (Zentner 159). This difference in economic privilege causes conflict between Dill and Lydia, as Lydia is often unable to comprehend what makes it hard for Dill and Travis to envision a life outside of Forestville.

In a scene with her Dad, he talks to Lydia about how lucky she is to have grown up in Forestville even if it is not somewhere she wants to be most like Manhattan. This then bleeds into a discussion about Travis and how he knows his dad is a mean person who is probably abusing him. This is then where Lydia turns a corner in her ability to empathize and become considerate of her friends and what they experience that she doesn’t have to. Looking at this through a Youth Lens as defined in “The Youth Lens: Analyzing Adolescence/ts In Literary Texts,” the message this says about adolescence is that teenagers need adults to be able to guide them to empathy and recognizing privilege (Petrone 13). There is an “implication of an in-capacity of youth in managing their lives” found in how Lydia overcomes her lack of empathy (Petrone 13).

In thinking critically about Lydia’s character development, I feel that she illuminates some stereotypes about women and girls. In the last quarter of the novel, a lot of her character begins to revolve around Dill at the same time as their romantic tension is building. The reader knows less and less as the novel progresses about her actual plans for New York and friends there. Instead, what seems to occupy her mind most, along with her grief over Travis, is Dill and making sure he will not commit suicide and still moves forward with his life. She takes on a lot of responsibility in relationship to his health as well as his post high-school plans. Then this romantic tension comes to a head chronologically as a result of her emotional investment in his life, as they kiss after she helps him apply to college. I could see the argument that it was good that she was able to use her privilege to help him, but I think that this type of responsibility she feels for him being what leads to their romantic connection to him contributes to stereotypes about what is expected of women in romantic relationships with men. Because of society’s views of women as primary supporters of men, and the sexist assumption that women are inherently more emotionally intelligently than men, women in relationships are often expected to do the of emotional labor of both partners in the relationship. They are expected to oversee the mental health of their partner as well as their own because of these assumptions about what women are “naturally” good at. This dynamic is shown here when Lydia’s dreams are pushed to aside as she invests more time into helping Dill manage his depression, which then results in a romantic peak.

Wholistically, this book portrays its loveable characters as resilient, which I think is part of why it would apeal to adolescents. Though they all face different hardships and even the grief of the death of a friend, they can get to the other side of their depression because of the potential of their lives ahead of them and their dreams that are coming to fruition. I think adolescents reading this may feel encouraged with a sense of “it gets better” after reading this book.

I would rate this book a B+. I appreciated the valuable insight this book gave on experiences in small rural Southern communities and I felt very connected to the character’s throughout the story. One of my favorite parts was the ending where Lydia and Dill are contemplating their morality in relation to Travis’s death. I think it is common in adolescence to feel overwhelmed with a sense of your own morality when someone close to you dies for the first time (if you have the privilege of this not occurring before adolescence). I thought that feeling was portrayed really accurately by Zentner. However, I felt there were problematic aspects of Lydia’s character and she lacked the depth that I feel the male characters were given. It also lacked any characters of color and there were no queer characters which is disappointing.

Content Warnings

liamourie's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

audreads100's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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