Moon as a character - Essay Example

The centrifugal elements of the story have served to also deliver a sense of shock value to those who hear it. These main elements are Salome herself, so beautiful and enchanting that her own stepfather Herod the king, is smitten by her. This is an incestual element which is certainly edgy enough to gain attention. Secondly, a man of God who claims to be a prophet, is so hated that he is murdered in a brutal way in order to please a beautiful woman. These elements are just the surface of a thicket of metaphorical allegory.

The moon is of course something of a constant. Certainly, we assume that in any story taking place on this planet, the moon is automatically thought to be lurking overhead in the night. This however, is not the only place for the moon in this particular tale. Salome uses numerous references to ‘white’ which is thought to in essence, represent the moon. Additionally, the story has two human voyeurs, the page and the Syrian. It is the page who is smitten or hypnotized by the moon but really, the moon is serving as a metaphor for princess Salome.

This gives a circular quality to the story and reminds the reader that on one layer, there are these people of royalty who are in fact subject to voyeurs. Princess Salome is the object of her stepfather Herod’s voyeurism as well as the voyeurism of the page and the Syrian. Beyond this layer, the voyeurs are subject to the moon itself as it looms overhead as a distant but present voyeur. The moon in fact, is the voyeur watching this entire story unfold. Getting back to the nature of the story’s conflicts, it is both an incestual situation materializing which leads to the brutal murder and sadistic handling of a man of God.

The piece is entirely fashioned around an emphasis on the dark side of human beings with the additional almost cautionary sense that someone is always watching. This is perhaps the heaviest and most impressive metaphor used in the piece between the moon and