Rodney perished not once but threefold.

First, his days were over even before the glass enveloped him, when someone saw in him the perfect specimen for curious eyes to behold. Rodney's condition as a remembrance ahead of its time preceded his tragic destiny: the simple fact of being alive infused him with a halo of uniqueness, inspiring the desire for possession in much the same way that the fire of the gods inspired Prometheus. For the sake of his aura, then, Rodney's mortal being was extinguished, rewriting the Greek legend: the hermit crab not only lost his own vital fire, but also was chained to a synthetic rock.

After his mummification, Rodney gave up his ghost to the homogenizing bulldozer of commodity fetishism, which made him into a souvenir like any other, interchangeable with the scorpions and pirhanas.

Finally, the tiny crustacean went out with the ebb of mechanical reproduction, whose magnificent replicas of Rodney look-alikes make my friends wonder whether Rodney is real or just a nice plastic imitation, taking from Rodney his last bit of hermit-crab dignity.

And, of course, Rodney dies every time we forget about him, relegating him to the netherworld of oblivion and abandonment, rendering his sacrifice futile, his perennial limbo doubly irredeemable.