Question

The encounter with the snake and the dual response of the poet to his presence at the water trough reflect a conflict between civilized social education and natural human instincts. The poet writes a diary entry highlighting how he was torn between the two voices. Write his diary.

Answer 1

July 16, 1926

Today, I am haunted by the encounter at the water trough. I went there to draw water, expecting nothing but the quiet heat of the afternoon, yet I found a guest, a golden-brown snake, drinking from my trough.

I stood there, a man schooled in the ways of my society, and the first voice in my mind was cold and rigid. It told me that a man should be a man and that a snake in this land is a venomous thing that must be killed. It spoke with the authority of education, urging me to prove my bravery by striking this creature down. I felt the familiar weight of these social lessons, the idea that nature is an enemy to be conquered, and that I, as a civilised being, had a duty to destroy it.

Yet, there was another voice, one deeper and more ancient. It was a feeling of profound awe, a recognition of this creature as a king in exile, a guest of the earth who had come to drink and vanish. I watched him the way he lifted his head, the way he moved with such primal, unhurried grace, and I felt ashamed. The thought of hitting him felt like a vulgar, petty act, a betrayal of the hospitality one should offer a fellow living thing.

I am left here now with a sickening sense of regret. I threw a log at him, not because I truly hated him, but because I succumbed to the pressure of that ‘civilised’ voice. I chose to align myself with a narrow human pride rather than the natural instinct to honour life. I have lost a moment of connection with the wild, and I fear that in my attempt to be ‘civilised,’ I have only revealed how disconnected I have become from the heart of the world.