" When Chiwantopel calls the snake his “little sister,” this is not without significance for Miss Miller, because the hero is in fact her brother-beloved, her “ghostly lover,” the animus. She herself is his life-snake which brings death to him. When the hero and his horse die, the green snake remains, and the snake is nothing other than the unconscious psyche of the author herself who now, as we have seen, will suffer the same fate as Chiwantopel, that is, she will be overpowered by her unconscious. "

― C.G. Jung , Symbols of Transformation (Collected Works 5)