Importance of the Snail Paired with the Woman

     To start off I will say that even understanding the plot of this text was confusing and hard to grasp, so this analysis will be based on what I understood from the plot. So upon reading, I found that the old lady and the snail display contradictions and comparisons that can only really be seen with the incorporation of the snail. It gives an example as to what the mood and environment was during a war. 

     First the lady burned through many topics very quickly, rehashing old memories and history during a war. This contrasts a snail because they are very slow and melancholy, rather than quick and full of mental capacity. Another contradiction could be that there was so much happening around the lady at this time including war and sadness, whereas the snail has nothing happening to it other than being stuck to a wall and trying to move (and being very slow at it). So many worries surrounded this lady, she failed to see the snail move and therefore thought it was a nail head or a leaf. "What has it all been about?…I can't remember a thing. Everything's moving, falling, slipping, vanishing" (p. 1102). This refers to the losses they suffered during the war and not understanding what it could possibly be. She had no clue what the mark was because so many other thoughts filled her head.

     Similarly, the snail and the assumed older woman had something in common: their perceived age and melancholiness as "characters" in this story. Both were slow to do anything and lacked the excitement of an upbeat and lighthearted character in a story. Usually snails live for a long time, and since this snail was moving slow enough to not be noticed, I can assume it was older, like the woman in the work. 

     The snail moved so slow it was not detectable to the woman, showing the contradiction between a fast life that she lived and the slow life that the snail lived. It displays how life is fast and flashes before your eyes (literally, for the woman). This analysis can only seen because of the snail that is seen on the wall. I think the incorporation of the snail was genius because it shed light upon the contrasts that took place in the story. 

     Questions:

1. Was this story short to shed light upon the fact that nothing lasts for long during a war? 

2. Was the snail incorporated to show that this was the only sense of entertainment (if there was any) during a war?