No Place to Die: Neoliberalism, Anti-Idyll, and Social (Im)mobility in The Serpent King

Class and geography profoundly influence rural youth’s opportunities and aspirations for social mobility (Carr & Kefalas, 2009). Neoliberalism insists this mobility is achievable individually through education, though education is also often antithetical to the rural lifeworlds and communities of youth pursuing it (Corbett, 2007). These socioeconomic tensions are underscored by cultural assumptions that consider rurality to be deficient and dangerous (Theobauld & Wood, 2010). Jeff Zentner’s The Serpent King (2016) offers representations of the economic barriers and cultural pressures rural youth experience as they navigate the inequitable opportunities for their post-secondary lives. The analysis shows that although the novel suggests a model for rural youth to support one another, the solidarity does not address the actual structural causes of inequity. Although the novel misses opportunities to imagine militant particularisms among rural youth (Williams, 1989), attending to these oversights reveals possibilities for imagining action for change that benefits both rural youth and the communities in which they live.