"A Mine Of Serpents" by Shena MacKay. A Semiotic Approach.

A Mine of Serpents

by Shena MacKay

A Mine of Serpents by Shena MacKay is a story intimately a landlord, Gerald Creedy, who is being manipulated by one of his tenants, Madame Alphonsine, by way of life of a wax puppet in which she introduces small needles. He is presented as a rather selfish and grumbling man, who likes to rag small children and make fun of the others.

(1) A Mine of Serpents. The surname says much and nothing. A mine of snakes could be a macroscopic excavation made in the earth full of serpents, but then, snake nests are not that large in bon ton to fill a mine. In the mind of the reader, this phrase cannot be visually represented because it defies the natural logic of things. Even so, it is exactly this awkwardness that stirs the readers imagination, making him or her part of the imaginative emergence of the story. As opposed to snake, the word serpent in The rude(a) Oxford Dictionary of English (edited in 1998) has several meanings, such as: 1.a large snake; 2.a dragon or other mythic snake-like reptile; 3.a biblical name for Satan (see Gen.3, Rev.20); and 4.a sly and perfidious person. Yet, in the mind of the reader, the literal meaning of the word serpent prevails over the figurative one, because the latter is derived from the former.



Even if the title has no verb, the motion, the agitation and the jostling suggested by this image is implied by the plural form of the noun serpents, because they seem to be trapped in a mine, since, generally speaking, they are solitary reptiles.

The incipit of the story: (2) Gerald found deuce burnt-out rockets in the front garden when he went to find out that the dustman had replaced the lids properly is simple and...

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