Laocoön

Laocoön is the Trojan priest who, together with his sons, is attacked by serpents. The ancient sculptural group presents suffering not as a single event but as a structure of physical and emotional entanglement.

The figure has become important to my reading of John Barth’s The End of the Road. Barth invokes Laocoön repeatedly, and the image increasingly appears to describe Rennie’s condition: trapped among relationships and choices that offer no acceptable escape.

Laocoön also connects the Barth reading with my work on R.E.M.’s “Laughing,” where apparent lightness and pastoral beauty coexist with warning and tragedy.