Importance of Love in A Feast of Snakes.
...d he is stunned when she rids herself of his love in the only way possible--by killing him. Elfie's love for her husband, Joe Lon Mackey, is desperate and pathetic. He treats her abysmally. Her bad teeth and sagging breasts repulse him. He explodes without provocation; one night at dinner, "She kept staring straight ahead while he stuffed the dripping biscuit down the front of her cotton dress" (11). He physically abuses her, lying to his father that Elfie is clumsy to explain her black eyes and smashed fingers. She even endures his flagrant adultery in their trailer as she stands outside. Joe Lon himself wonders why she doesn't leave him. But she stays, promising to get her teeth fixed and covering her bruises with powder because, she tells him, "'Me'n the babies love you, Joe Lon, honey'" (65). While love can hurt, the loss of love can destroy minds, hearts, and bodies. When Joe Lon's mother falls for another man, the entire family disintegrates, including her. "His mother had left for reasons of love. . . . And in deserting them had left an enormous ragged hole in their lives" (119). Joe Lon believes that "love seemed to mess up everything" (118), and "he carried it around with him, a scabrous spot of rot, of contagion, for which there was no cure. Rage would not cure it. Indulgence made it worse, inflamed it, made it grow like a cancer. And it had ruined his life" (118). Joe Lon's sister Beeder, who was the first to see their mother...