The White Snake explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Virtue Rewarded and Vice Punished

  The servant's kindness to animals is repaid with help that enables him to complete the tasks and win the princess, while the proud princess is humbled and ultimately rewarded with love.

• Promises and Their Consequences

  The king promises the servant a favor after proving his innocence, and the princess's conditional promises of marriage drive the plot.

• Magic and the Supernatural

  The white snake grants the power to understand animal speech, and the grateful animals perform supernatural feats (retrieving a ring, gathering grain, bringing an apple from the Tree of Life).

Characters to notice

• the servant

  The king's trusty servant who eats the white snake, gains animal speech, proves his innocence, and later wins the princess's hand.

• the king

  The wise king who eats a secret dish and later accuses the servant of theft, then sets tasks for the princess's suitors.

• the princess

  The king's beautiful daughter who sets three impossible tasks for her suitors, eventually marrying the servant.

• the queen

  The queen whose ring is lost and later found inside a duck.

Key passages

• “No sooner had it touched his tongue than he heard a strange whispering of little voices outside his window. He went and listened, and then noticed that it was the sparrows who were chattering together, and telling one another of all kinds of things which they had seen in the fields and woods. Eating the snake had given him power of understanding the language of animals.”

  The moment the snake touched his tongue, he heard tiny voices whispering outside; listening, he realized the sparrows were gossiping about everything they'd seen. The snake had granted him the ability to understand animal speech.

  This moment establishes the magical gift that drives the entire story.

• “The servant at once seized her by the neck, carried her to the kitchen, and said to the cook, 'Here is a fine duck; pray, kill her.' ... So he cut off her head, and as she was being dressed for the spit, the Queen's ring was found inside her.”

  The servant grabbed the duck, took it to the cook, and asked for it to be killed. When the cook cut off its head and prepared it for roasting, the queen's ring was discovered inside.

  The servant uses his new ability to overhear the duck's confession and clear his name.

• “The youth did not know where the Tree of Life stood, but he set out, and would have gone on forever, as long as his legs would carry him, though he had no hope of finding it. After he had wandered through three kingdoms, he came one evening to a wood, and lay down under a tree to sleep. But he heard a rustling in the branches, and a golden apple fell into his hand. At the same time three ravens flew down to him, perched themselves upon his knee, and said, 'We are the three young ravens whom you saved from starving; when we had grown big, and heard that you were seeking the Golden Apple, we flew over the sea to the end of the world, where the Tree of Life stands, and have brought you the apple.'”

  The youth set out to find the Tree of Life, wandering hopelessly through three kingdoms until he fell asleep in a wood. A rustling in the branches woke him, and a golden apple dropped into his hand. Three ravens landed on his knee and explained they were the ones he had saved from starvation; now grown, they had flown to the end of the world to fetch the apple from the Tree of Life.

  The ravens repay the servant's earlier kindness by obtaining the final object needed to win the princess.