Do snakes have any religious symbolism in Prisoners?
In the movie Prisoners, snakes are mentioned/shown a few times throughout the movie.
- Taylor keeps a few containers filled with bloody clothes and living snakes
- The mummified kidnaper used to keep lots of snakes
- The police found dead snakes buried in the backyard by the end of the movie
Given their unholy crusade to break people's faith, Mr. and Mrs Jones kidnap children to commit intentional evil and Mrs .Jones tells Loki not to bury her in a box.
I am wondering if keeping snakes is aligned with their anti-Christianity theme, although it is not clear whether Mr. Jones started keeping snakes before or after their son dies of cancer.
Best Answer
Given the extensive focus on religion, it can be logical to compare the snakes from the film to the one from the Bible. I'm of course referring to the snake that convinces Eve to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. An excerpt from Wikipedia:
The Hebrew word ?????? (Nachash) is used to identify the serpent that appears in Genesis 3:1, in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis, the serpent is portrayed as a deceptive creature or trickster, who promotes as good what God had forbidden and shows particular cunning in its deception. (cf. Gen. 3:4–5 and 3:22) The serpent has the ability to speak and to reason: "Now the serpent was more subtle (also translated as "cunning") than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made" (Gen. 3:1).
In the film, the couple abducted children as part of their "war on God". This would make the parents of the abducted children "demons" as they desperately search for their kids. Dover, in a way, does turn into a demon as he tortures an innocent, mentally challenged Alex (getting his own faith challenged in the process).
The snake symbolizes chaos, a chaos that turns good people to doing things they aren't supposed to (eating the apple despite strict instructions from God). In this way the snake embodies the chaos the Jones' want to unleash on their victims. In their view it's anti-Christian.
There is no direct reference to this in the film but I'm pretty sure, given the religious symbolism in the film, this is the explanation for the snakes.
Pictures about "Do snakes have any religious symbolism in Prisoners?"
What does snake symbolize?
Ever since Eve's transgression in the Garden of Eden, snakes in Christian tradition have been associated with lies, evil and temptation. But in other cultures, as far-flung as ancient Greece and Egypt and indigenous North America, snakes symbolize fertility, rebirth, renewal and even immortality.What do snake symbolize in the Bible?
The serpent was a symbol of evil power and chaos from the underworld as well as a symbol of fertility, life and healing. N\u0101\u1e25\u0101\u0161 (\u05e0\u05d7\u05e9\u200e), Hebrew for "snake", is also associated with divination, including the verb form meaning "to practice divination or fortune-telling".What does serpent symbolize in Christianity?
The serpent is a universal and complex symbol. It can represent death, destruction, evil, a penetrating legless essence, and/or poison. In the Christian tradition, Satan (in the guise of the serpent) instigated the fall by tricking Eve into breaking God's command.What does the maze represent in Prisoners?
The whole concept of a maze is that people become lost in the convolutions and complications of the structure. Prisoners puts that concept onto how people struggle to work through and escape from their traumas.Prisoners: Symbolism Done Right
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