All 3 Uses

serpent
in
The Color Purple
(Auto-generated)

So these Olinka people heard about Adam and Eve from the white missionaries and they heard about how the serpent tricked Eve and how God chased them out of the garden of Eden.†

serpent = snake
Then they will become the new serpent.†
*
They think, after the biggest of the white folks no longer on the earth, the only way to stop making somebody the serpent is for everybody to accept everybody else as a child of God, or one mother's children, no matter what they look like or how they act.†

Definitions:

(1) (serpent)
a snake
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
For less common senses of "serpent", see a comprehensive dictionary.