Ambrose Bierce's The Man and the Snake: A Detailed Summary and a Literary Analysis
- Michael Kellermeyer
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Nietzsche famously wrote: “He who fights monsters should look to it that he not become a monster. And if you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” This would be a fine thesis for the following story which revisits some of Bierce’s most beloved ideas: the hubris of intellectual pride, the false veneer of civilization which is easily eroded by spiritual terror, the power of the imagination, and the collective unconscious.
During the Civil War, Bierce frequently witnessed the humiliating unmanning of self-sure soldiers with romantic confidence in their own bravery. He saw polished young, gentleman-officers break and run for cover while scruffy, low-born privates faced live rounds with self-deprecating stoicism. Although this story doesn’t take place during warfare, it is still a tale of battle – battle between mankind’s loftiest aspirations and his basest nature.
SUMMARY
In The Man and the Snake, Harker Brayton, a wealthy and educated bachelor recently returned from extensive travels, is staying at the home of his friend, the scientist Dr. Druring, in San Francisco. Relaxing alone in his bedroom one evening, Brayton lounges on a sofa in dressing gown and slippers, reading an old book called Marvells of Science by the antiquarian Morryster.
He smiles skeptically at a passage claiming that serpents possess a supernatural ability to mesmerize victims, drawing them helplessly toward death through the force of their gaze: “the serpente hys eye hath a magnetick propertie” compelling those who look upon it to perish by its bite. Brayton dismisses the belief as ignorant superstition, amused that supposedly “wise and learned” people once accepted such nonsense.
As he reads, however, he notices two faint points of light beneath his bed. At first he assumes they are reflections, but repeated glances reveal that they seem brighter and closer. Lowering his book a final time, he discovers with horror that the lights are the eyes of a large snake, coiled in shadow beneath the bedstead. Its broad head rests menacingly upon its coils, and its gaze appears charged with “malign significance.”
The narrative briefly explains Brayton’s circumstances. Dr. Druring, an eccentric scientist fascinated by reptiles and lower forms of life, maintains a wing of his house as a combination laboratory, museum, and menagerie known as the “Snakery.” Though Brayton had been warned that some reptiles occasionally escaped their enclosures, he had thought little of it, enjoying the comfort and luxury of the household.
Though initially revolted, Brayton feels little fear and considers quietly retreating from the room. Yet when he attempts to step backward, he finds himself mysteriously unable to do so. His feet instead move forward toward the snake.
Pride prevents him from summoning help, for he refuses to think himself a coward. Meanwhile, the serpent’s eyes intensify, becoming “electric sparks” radiating dreadful force. Brayton falls increasingly under their influence, perceiving dazzling hallucinations: vivid circles of color, strange music “inconceivably sweet,” Egyptian landscapes, rainbows framing distant cities, and finally an enormous crowned serpent bearing the eyes of his dead mother.
When Brayton collapses and momentarily averts his gaze, he briefly breaks free of the spell, realizing that escape might still be possible if he refuses to look again. Yet terror of the unseen creature compels him to lift his eyes once more, returning immediately to bondage. Convulsing helplessly upon the floor, bleeding and frothing at the mouth, he drags himself ever closer to the snake despite desperate efforts to resist.
Downstairs, Dr. Druring casually discusses with his wife a newly acquired ophiophagus, or snake-eater, dismissing as absurd the very superstition about serpent fascination that Brayton had mocked earlier. Their conversation is interrupted by horrifying screams. Rushing upstairs, they discover Brayton dead upon the floor, his body partly beneath the bed. Looking underneath, Dr. Druring finds the terrifying snake and angrily drags it into the room—revealing it to be nothing more than a stuffed specimen with “two shoe buttons” for eyes.
ANALYSIS
Brayton has everything that men desire – he is popular, athletic, attractive, unattached, and well off – but when pit against one of humanity’s ancient enemies (even while in the security and comfort of an urban, middleclass home), he finds that all these accolades are cheap costumes covering his bald humanity. Without making a move – or being alive – the stuffed snake’s mere presence compels something ancient and vestigial within Brayton’s spirit to submit to its animalistic power.
The snake – which Bierce characterizes as brainless, un-intellectual, and thoughtless – represents the potency of pure intuition and will. An agent of evolutionary animal desires (survival, satisfying hunger, and sex), the snake’s silent clarion call summons Brayton’s long repressed caveman-self, and it is discovered that in spite of his accomplishments and popularity, as a caveman he is fatally deficient.
In one of the most sublime moments of the story – one which presages the mystical supernaturalism of Oliver Onions, Arthur Machen, and Algernon Blackwood – Brayton recognizes his dead mother’s eyes in the snake’s gaze, associates its beckoning with Greek hymns from a previous life, and finds himself projected into an ancient, desert landscape.
Whether – as in “John Bartine’s Watch” – Bierce is hinting that his protagonist has been reincarnated or not, there is no question that the urban playboy has recollected a distant summons from his ancestral spirit. His civility and intellect are reduced to ash in the face of spiritual terror, and he finds himself mesmerized by the internalized Idea of the snake, rather than any external force.
In fact, while some have interpreted this as a ghost story (with the snake’s spirit gaining revenge on mankind), I think we are intended to view the snake as an internalized projection – a latent part of Brayton’s own, uneveloved ego – which rises up from his stunted spirit and overtakes his mind.
As with so many of Bierce’s stories the lesson seems to be that regardless of how educated or enlightened we may consider ourselves, it only takes a stress point in just the right spot to completely unravel our securities, leaving us as naked and vulnerable as a prehistoric nomad waking up in a cave with a snake coiling around his throat.