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Empathy In The Rattler

Decent Essays

When in times of danger, people must often take the actions they see best fit. In "The Rattler," the author depicts a vivid story of a man who has to make a difficult choice while facing a rattlesnake in the desert. Despite the man seeing a threat in the snake, it is him that becomes a threat to the other. By using the descriptions of the man, the snake and the specific setting, the author affects the reader by creating a sense of empathy for the narrator and sympathy for the snake. With such a connection, it adds a greater depth to the story for the reader to analyze.
To begin with, the sense of empathy for the man is formed by including his point-of-view and a description of his character. One of the first examples of these techniques is when he finds the snake and states, “My first instinct was to let him go his way.” From this thought the reader can tell that the man has no inclination of killing the snake at first and did not see him as any sort of immediate threat. With the author’s decision to write the passage in the first person perspective of the man it has a crucial impact of skewing details to reflect off of his perceptions, allowing for a better insight on the character. Another example that helps the readers empathize with the man is when he reveals his views on a potential killing by mentioning, “I have never killed an animal I was not obliged to kill.” Although all that the man says is that he will only kill an animal if necessary, by choosing to inform the

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