At the Bottom of the River

The parable that the narrator recounts about a “small creature” that “lived inside a mount that it made on the ground” is a symbolic representation of how most people—including the narrator’s father—choose to live their lives (70).

The creature attempts to live outside the comforts of its mound and decides to attempt to kill a honeybee, which instead stings it, causing the creature “unbearably delicious” pain (70). As a result, the creature decides to stay around its mound, never venturing far but instead wearing down a path as it treads the same areas over and over again for the rest of its life. Parts of the story are left ambiguous, making the parable applicable to a large majority of humanity. First, the creature is genderless, implying that its characteristics apply to all genders. Additionally, it lives for “a length of time that may be measured to be no less than the blink of an eye, or no more than one hundred millenniums” (71). In other words, as with humanity, it is irrelevant how long it lives; much more important is how it lives its life.

Throughout the parable, the phrase “unbearably delicious” is repeated. This, in turn, is linked to the pain caused by the bee, the act of wearing down the ground, the creature’s memories, and the “unbearably delicious pleasure” of remembering (70-71).