Snapdragon

Roadkill is a symbol that helps explore The Social Effect of Being Perceived As Different. For Jacks, roadkill symbolizes the loneliness and alienation of being ostracized and forgotten by society. Jacks saves roadkill from their fate on the side of the road so they don’t have to die alone and forgotten. She has profound empathy for their spirits due to her own fear of being alone with no connections left in the world.

Jacks thinks that her lot in life is already determined and the choices she made when she was young determined her eternal fate. Jessie wanted “a bustlin’ home” but Jacks didn’t (98): This led to their break-up. Jacks says that Jessie “met a kind man and they raised the family she wanted. She got what she wanted…and I suppose I did as well” (101). An illustration on page 101 shows Jacks riding her motorcycle alone, away down a dark, deserted road. This road symbolizes her life, which she has now chosen to live alone.

The compassionate way Jacks treats roadkill also show that age—and even, eventually death—is not an ending. Jacks tells Snap, “Lotsa folks don’t even notice when they hit something. So I notice ‘em […] Then put ‘em where the buggies can safely eat ‘em up. Then, they become something new. And they’re remembered” (61-62). For Jacks, the death of these animals is not their ending. By burying them, their decay contributes to the biological cycles of the local ecosystem. By then re-articulating their skeletons, their memory lives on in the form of the new thing they have become. The roadkill thus has a second life and contributes to the lives of other creatures. This perspective on roadkill makes Jacks different than anyone else in town and contributes to the town’s rumor that she “eats roadkill.”

Other people do not see the same potential in roadkill that Jacks sees. Jacks’s own isolation gives her compassion and empathy for them. Jacks doesn’t seem to have the same hope for herself as she has for the roadkill. She tells Snap that both she and Jessie moved on. Before that, she doesn’t reach out to the town to establish relationships with anyone or correct their misconceptions about her. Only after she meets Snap does she begin to think that she, like the roadkill she says, might be able to have a fulfilling rebirth, even though society perceives her as different. She begins to read books on “The Basics of Teaching” (152) and agrees to go with Snap to Jessie’s house to reforge their connection.