Copperheaded Lilith
The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 09 May 2001
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2631

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Roy C. Lackey — 09 May 2001, 03:20

    Here is my spin on "Copperhead". As others have mentioned, the "boys"
mentioned by the naked woman are, indeed, Cain and Abel, as well as the
murdered man and his murderer in the story's version of our modern world. As
is all too characteristic of Wolfe's characters, the NP isn't paying
attention when he ought to be, even though the woman was answering the
question he had just asked her. She was telling him about the place where
she came from, which was the OT book of Genesis. As Wolfe usually does when
he retells a story from mythology, or elsewhere, he twists the story to suit
his purposes. The boys the woman mentioned were literally Cain and Abel. As
both Endymion and Paul Duggan have noted before me, the difficult phrase
"Vhas a groose.", I translate as "[He] Was a grouse." In American slang, a
grouse is a person who habitually complains. She was referring to Adam, and
she is, as mantis intimated, Lilith.

    When the NP, in his new-found Pride at the Power of his position,
inadvertently pressed a button on the Changer and exchanged the copperhead
snake in the leaves for its cognate in The Garden, he got Lilith, Adam's
first wife, who represents Sin, in general, and Lust, specifically. The
irony is that when Lilith grabbed the Changer and pressed the button, *she*
exchanged the NP for the old Adam she disdained, who "grunted" over her, who
is the very tall man at the end of the story. And he is a man, not God;
Wolfe conflates the biblical passages alluded to so that it is the new Adam
who does both the cursing and who "shall crush your head under my heel."

    I'll leave it to Nutria or Alex to expand on the religious
ramifications.

-Roy

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Michael Straight — 09 May 2001, 08:38
  follows, by subject match Roy C. Lackey

> On Wed, 9 May 2001, Roy C. Lackey wrote:
>     When the NP, in his new-found Pride at the Power of his position,
> inadvertently pressed a button on the Changer and exchanged the copperhead
> snake in the leaves for its cognate in The Garden, he got Lilith, Adam's
> first wife, who represents Sin, in general, and Lust, specifically. The
> irony is that when Lilith grabbed the Changer and pressed the button, *she*
> exchanged the NP for the old Adam she disdained, who "grunted" over her, who
> is the very tall man at the end of the story. And he is a man, not God;
> Wolfe conflates the biblical passages alluded to so that it is the new Adam
> who does both the cursing and who "shall crush your head under my heel."

Although I'm not sure how (if?) it fits with the creation narratives in
Genesis, the Lilith myth seems to take place before the Fall.  There is a
tradition that before the Fall, humanity and all of nature were different,
more glorious.  This accounts for Adam's godlike appearance, his authority
to condemn Lilith, and for the weirdness of the place where the new
President ends up; he's in the unfallen Eden where the trees sing and the
the ram's horns make music.

-Rostrum

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