Snow Day By Billy Collins Essay

The Winter is the opposite of summer, during the winter not only does the winter change but the town's appearance. The houses that once looked artificial were exposed and looked abandoned. “Winter comes down savagely over a little town on the prairie...The roofs, that looked so far away across the green treetops...they are so much more uglier then when their angles were softened by vines and

“Let It Snow” by David Sedaris is a short story that magnifies the extent to which children might go in order to grab the attention of their parents. It is full imaginative details that would help the reader understand what it feels like to be a child. Sedaris starts with these imaginative details from the beginning of the story to the end and this keeps the interest of the reader. After the reader begins to read he/she might get the assumption that the story will be about a snow day, but it focuses on the hurt and neglect in which Sedaris and his siblings experience from their drunken mother and absent father. After being kicked out into the cold by their mother, the children are left to think about their relationship with their parents while battling a cold weather. The writer begins to express his feelings towards his parents, particularly his mother, by providing various details that keep the reader emotionally invested in the story.

Denise Fleming is a stunning writer who tells a lesson all through her book. Her style is about having pictures that can repeat the story without reading the words on the page. Throughout her book, The First Day of Winter, the pictures in the beginning help introduce the setting of when a child would make a snowman by illustrating a page with the season of December on it. The setting is determined on the first page and after, she goes into how to make a snowman. Fleming’s pictures require words that explain parts of every piece that is added to the snowman in the story. The photos are clear by illustrating each piece as it is set on the snowman; however, she additionally includes two or three animals that would be found in the setting, so the

The story begins with a much awaited snow day, for the first time in years the snow fell, accumulated and actually stuck. The children were excited and the mother was going nuts. David Sedaris short story, “Let It Snow” is effective because he shows the unconditional love of family by how the characters are portrayed and using dry humor. The mother in the story was an alcoholic, although “drinking didn’t count if you followed a glass of wine with a cup of coffee” (Sedaris 89). She lived a secret life when everybody was away and the presence of the kids in the house days on end drove the mother insane, so much that she ended up kicking them out of the house in the snow for hours.

After reading several very different critical readings, “Let it Snow” stood out the most. A story based around the author as a young child and his siblings during a snow day seemed to be a rather strange basis for a story; however, the dark purpose of this story has shed a light on the unnerving reality that sometimes a mother wanted peace a quiet and the only way to achieve it, was to lock her kids out of the house. As the story progresses, it is truly evident that the children may have died if their mother did not come for them. David Sedaris’s “Let it Snow” is an exemplary form of writing that introduces a strong conflict, descriptive character development, and depicts strong emotion.

In The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey, an Alaskan setting in the 1920’s contributes to the atmosphere of isolation, harsh conditions, and quiet.

I hope you are having a good snow day. I wanted to thank you again for letting me study last week for comps!! I was looking forward to starting the work today. Since I did not work last week and today is a snow day, I was curious if there was any work I could do from home today? I also can come in this weekend to make up for missed hours. Let me know, I am more then willing to work from home today.

Frost describes the little boy's work in the first two lines by saying the 'stove-length sticks of wood,' inferring the practical nature of his work. The mountains described in the next lines further add to the captive nature of the poem. Vermont provides a

The story “A Blizzard under blue sky” by Pam Houston is about a woman who is not happy and very depressed. She makes a decision to go out into the wilderness. The woman believes that this adventure is the best cure for her even if it means death. She refuses to take any drugs that her doctor tries to prescribe her. She suffers from depression. Her friend Alex is very concerned about his friend and wonders why she would go out knowing that a bad snow storm is headed that way. So he offers her something that she can stay warm with, he offers her a heavy sleeping bag that is thickly layered for the coldest of winter days for her

to ignite the fire in order to heat up the house and give comfort to

“Boy at the Window” by Richard Wilbur is a poem of a youthful boy who feels heartbroken for the snowman outside his house. The boy thinks the snowman is real and is suffering outside in the storm, however; the snow man not existent. This poem is filled with many literary devices including; irony, personification, simile, imagery, and alliteration.

David Sedaris’ essay, “Let It Snow” is a reflection of Sedaris’ past. A single day from his childhood in North Carolina where Sedaris and his siblings were home due to school being closed for few days because of bad weather. The story reflects solely on the relationship that Sedaris’ mother had with him and his sisters, and how it was affected by her drinking problem. Although the story revolved around the children the mother was the main character.

It was a cold day, so cold that your arms start to sting as if a needle is impaling the surface of your skin. The wind applies a force which feels as if your face is oozing with thick crimson red blood. The gray puffy clouds covered the sky and dropped small snowflakes onto the road’s surface. A man stood there, freezing, clearing the coat of thick white snow from the concrete road. His nose runs with a river of snot that floods out when the cold wind strikes. His sense of smell is heavily clogged by the slimy snot, but he can still smell the scent of the steamy hot chocolate which sits on the top of his snow covered car. His feet start to numb because of the cold flood which soaks through his boots to his white, silky socks. His feet feel as if he stepped into the freezing cold ocean. As if he fell through ice and he was stuck standing there. The vast pile of the ice white snow feels almost like a quicksand around his black rubber boot. Foggy figures of people shovel the big piles of snow off the sidewalks. They scrape and pick at the glossy white ice which sticks to the sidewalk like a little boy clinging to his mother's side. His feet still sting as if he was stepping on pins and needles. His hands are damp with sweat from grasping the curved metal shaft attached to a socket which holds the blade. The blade cuts holes into the thick powdered snow which is removed from the endless pile. The jet black shovel is filled with slushy snow and crystal shards of ice. The end of

     The poem “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening”, by Robert Frost, is a short, yet intricate poem. What appears to be simple is not simple at all. What appears to be innocent is really not. The woods seem pristine and unimposing, however, they are described as being “dark and deep”, and it is the “darkest evening of the year”. He speaks of isolation, “between the woods and frozen lake” and of duty “But I have promises to keep”. And also, Frost’s usage of “sleep” easily implies death. Though this poem might come off at first to be nice and peaceful, however, that peace has an underlying menace.

From what I noticed in this poem, I read it as the man in the poem is not happy about winter and the snow with cold weather. When the man says “Snow on the flowery almond tree” I read that as the man saying that the snow is covering up all the good stuff on Earth. With “Snow on the snow” I read that as more snow is covering up the good things on Earth. The same thing applies to whern he says “It is like flowering almond tree under the snow” about how the snow is covering up all of the good things in the world. “It’s too cold this afternoon in the world” is saying that that afternoon almost all of the good things in the world are all completely covered in snow and that no one is able to see then and experience them. When the man says “But I open the door to my dog and he comes into the warmth” this shows him as saving his dog from the cold and allowing his dog to to enter warmth with the rest of humanity.The speaker (persona) for this poem is named Salvador Dali. This poet is what is known as a surrealist. A serrealist is an artist or writer who is an exponent of the avant-garde movement in art and literature which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind. Salvador Dali is a Spanish artist and poet who originated from Spain.Salvador Dali’s tone is more towards the sad and gloomy side rather than the happy and sunny side of life, winter specifically. When he is talking about the snow covering up all the good things in the world, I can tell that he is