Charity: A Character Analysis from Death in the Mouth

Overview

Charity is the narrator and protagonist of the second chapter of Death in the Mouth, titled “They Will Take Up Serpents.” Written by Yah Yah Scholfield21 and illustrated by Makoto Chi, the chapter presents Charity as an adult returning to her childhood home to confront her father about two formative traumas: a violent attempted drowning she endured at age seven and a public snake‑handling incident at age fifteen that left her with a permanent scar. Through Charity’s voice, the story explores the clash between lived experience and a parent’s revisionist denial, as well as the long‑term psychological toll of religious abuse. Her arc is one of determined truth‑seeking, even when that truth is denied.

Plot Role

Charity is the sole point‑of‑view character in her chapter. Her narrative provides a deeply personal, raw account of childhood abuse within a Pentecostal‑adjacent family led by a charismatic but abusive pastor father. While other chapters in the anthology feature protagonists confronting different kinds of violence—genocide, forced transformation, grief—Charity’s story grounds the collection’s exploration of trauma in a familial and faith‑based context. She serves as a case study for how survivors remember and how perpetrators rewrite history. The chapter also functions as a bridge between the anthology’s earlier focus on systemic oppression (chapter 1) and later stories about personal loss and metamorphosis.

Motivations and Traits Through Actions

Charity’s actions reveal a woman who is both resilient and haunted. She returns to her father’s house despite knowing the emotional cost, suggesting a deep need for acknowledgment rather than reconciliation. During the confrontation, she speaks calmly but her body betrays her: she flinches at his shouting, her eyes sting with tears, and her chest constricts “an anaconda wrapped around my torso” (evidence). She forces herself to count backward from ten to stay composed. These details show self‑discipline born of long practice.

Her desperation for her father to validate her memory is palpable. When he dismisses her snake‑bite scar by claiming “I gave them a little something to put them to bed,” she presses on, pulling her collar down to show the “permanent splotch of purple‑red” and the “ugly puncture wounds” (evidence). She does not relent even when he calls her a liar and accuses her mother of twisting her mind. This tenacity indicates that for Charity, having her story believed matters more than her father’s approval—a shift from the child who once “wanted for his love and his approval” and would “do anything for him, even unto death” (evidence).

Yet the chapter ends with her weeping in her car, doubting her own memory: “Even with my scarlet brand, my nails and feet pierced, my host of scars, I doubt” (evidence). This admission of uncertainty is central to her characterization—she is not a triumphant heroine but a woman still in the grip of her abuser’s gaslighting.

Chronological Arc

Charity’s story moves between three distinct time periods:

1. Age seven – The pseudo‑baptism. Her father drags her from the dinner table, fills a bathtub, and forces her head under water repeatedly while reciting scripture (Galatians, Luke, John, 1 Peter). She urinates in fear, hits her head on the lip of the tub, and sees blood in the water. Her mother pounds on the door. The scene lasts “minutes and hours” (evidence).

2. Age fifteen – The snake handling. During a revival in Alabama, her father wraps three venomous snakes around her neck as a demonstration of faith: Shadrach (copperhead), Meshach (pit viper), and Abednego (king cobra). Abednego bites her on the collarbone. Her father continues preaching while she collapses. A congregation member rushes her to the hospital; her mother drives.

3. Present day – The confrontation. Charity, now an adult, visits her father at his home. She recounts both incidents. He denies the snake bite outright and minimizes the baptism, claiming he never “laid a mean hand” on his children. He then “graciously forgives” her for blasphemy. She leaves, driving past a billboard of her father holding snakes aloft with the tagline “GOD IS ALWAYS IN CONTROL” (evidence).

The arc shows Charity’s progression from a compliant child (“I stay put... I do as I’m told”) to a confrontational adult who will speak her truth even when it earns her nothing but dismissal.

Relationships

• Father (the Pastor): The central relationship. He is both the source of her trauma and the gatekeeper of the family’s narrative. He uses scripture as a weapon and performance as a shield. His final act is to forgive her for telling the truth, which is a form of ongoing control.

• Mother: Though absent from the present‑day scene, the mother is a crucial figure. She was the one who “ran away” from the family. Charity recalls her mother’s perspective: “in the half hour where I wasn’t her daughter but a half‑dead thing flopped into her arms” (evidence). The mother’s flight and the father’s claim that she “twisted” Charity’s memory suggest the mother was a witness who chose escape over complicity.

• Prudence (younger sister): She is present during the confrontation, clattering pots in the kitchen in a pointed attempt to drown out the argument. She mouths an apology to Charity but does not speak up herself. Prudence embodies the siblings who “pretend the past doesn’t exist or change the shape of it” (evidence).

• Other siblings: Referenced indirectly. Charity notes that those who stayed in the mountains “pretend the past doesn’t exist” while those who left either lock it away or run. This contrasts her own choice to confront.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Decision 1: Returning home. Charity chooses to visit her father, knowing the hostility she will face. The consequence is a painful but clarifying confrontation that confirms her father will never validate her.

Decision 2: Telling her story in full. She describes the snake‑handling incident in graphic detail, forcing her father to hear it. The immediate consequence is his accusation of blasphemy and her ensuing doubt. The longer‑term consequence is that she has spoken the story aloud, countering the family’s silence.

Decision 3: Not denying her anger. She admits to herself that she is “full of wickedness, full of hatred” toward her father. She does not forgive him at the end, despite his performative forgiveness. This refusal to absolve him is a form of self‑protection.

Decision 4: Leaving. She drives away alone, weeping. The final image of the billboard—a sanitized version of her abuser—suggests that her father’s public persona continues to contradict her private truth. The consequence is that she remains in a state of unresolved pain, but she has not surrendered her memory.

Theme and Symbol Connections

Charity’s story is deeply connected to several of the anthology’s major themes, which are explored in more detail on the themes page.

• Trauma and Memory: The central conflict is between Charity’s embodied memory (the scar, the head wound) and her father’s revisionism. The chapter asks whether memory can survive when the only witness is yourself. Charity’s doubt—“Did I remember it right?”—is the precise tool of abuse.

• Transformation: While Charity does not physically transform like characters in other chapters (e.g., Jolie’s mother becoming part of the lake), she undergoes a psychological transformation from obedient child to defiant truth‑teller. Her scar is a permanent mark of violence that she both hides and displays.

• Identity and Otherness: Charity is othered within her own family. Her father treats her as a prop for his performances. She is the daughter of Eve called to “subdue the serpent,” but she is also the scapegoat. Her identity is shaped by her refusal to be silent.

• Revenge and Justice: Charity does not seek revenge. She seeks acknowledgment. Her confrontation is an appeal to justice, but she receives none. The story suggests that for survivors of familial abuse, justice may be unattainable, but speaking truth is still necessary.

• Family Bonds: The dysfunctional Scholfield family illustrates how blood ties can be weaponized. Charity’s bond with her mother (albeit tangential) and her complicated pity for Prudence show that family bonds are not broken cleanly, even when they are abusive.

Two powerful symbols recur: snakes and water. The snakes represent the father’s faith‑as‑performance and the danger he forces onto his child. Water, which should be cleansing (baptism), becomes a medium of suffocation. The scar on Charity’s collarbone functions as a permanent symbol of the event her father denies—what the ending explained page might call an irrefutable piece of evidence that still fails to convince the abuser.

Questions and Answers

1. Why does Charity decide to confront her father as an adult?
   She needs to break the family silence and reclaim her version of events. Her recurrence to the past suggests she cannot move forward until she speaks her truth aloud, even if he refuses to hear it.

2. Why does Charity describe her seven‑year‑old self as believing baptism would be a “glamorous affair”?
   The contrast between her fantasy of a gentle River Jordan ceremony and the reality of being “shoved” under cold bathwater underscores how thoroughly her father corrupted a sacred ritual. Her childhood innocence is shattered by his violence.

3. What does the father’s denial of the snake bite reveal about him?
   He is unable to face his own culpability. By claiming he drugged the snakes, he constructs a narrative in which he is still in control and still a good father. His denial is a mechanism of self‑preservation, but it also gaslights his daughter.

4. How does Charity’s relationship with her siblings compare to her relationship with her parents?
   She feels alienated from siblings who “pretend the past doesn’t exist” or who stayed in the abusive home. Prudence’s silent apology suggests a shared understanding, but they cannot openly ally. Charity is solitary in her confrontation.

5. What is the function of the final billboard image in the story?
   The billboard—showing her father holding snakes with the slogan “GOD IS ALWAYS IN CONTROL”—encapsulates the public version of the man versus the private reality. It reinforces that his myth persists while Charity’s truth remains invisible. The image also hints that the cycle of abuse is sustained by the larger community that applauded him.

For further discussion of the anthology’s structure and ending, see the ending explained and questions and answers pages.