Why Is Edwin Fiske's Dark?

Mary Oliver shows that snow is much more than crystallized water. When Oliver talks about the snow she uses precise words such as smolder, the word is usually used to describe the exact opposite of what snow is, fire. The snow is given a whole other view. A view that has not often been seen. Oliver creates questions “and though the questions/ that have assailed us all day/ remain - not a single/ answer has been found” (Oliver 645, 23-31). She wonders why the snow has come, but is content with the final product, the beauty of the snow. The complexity of the snow creates a new, never before seen image, resulting in the beauty that is overlooked. Using feelings and words, Oliver expresses her complex thought of the snow. She used “an oracular fever” (Oliver 645, 9). The quote specifies that the felt the snow had hidden qualities.

We had not gone a rod when we found ourselves in a heap, in a heavy drift of snow. We took hold of each others’ hands, pulled ourselves out, got into the road, and the cold north wind blew us down the road a half mile south, where the Strelow boys and John Conrad had to go west a mile or more. When they reached a bridge in a ravine, the little fellows sheltered a while under the bridge, a wooden culvert, but Robert, the oldest, insisted that they push on thru the blinding storm for their homes. In the darkness they stumbled in, and by degrees their parents thawed them out, bathed their frozen hands, noses, ears and cheeks, while the boys cried in pain. “My brothers and I could not walk thru the deep snow in the road, so we took down the rows of corn stalks to keep from losing ourselves ’till we reached our pasture fence. Walter was too short to wade the deep snow in the field, so Henry and I dragged him over the top. For nearly a mile we followed the fence ’till we reached the corral and pens. In the howling storm, we could hear the pigs squeal as they were freezing in the mud and snow. Sister Ida had opened the gate and let the cows in from the field to the sheds, just as the cold wind struck and froze her skirts stiff around her like hoops. The barn and stables were drifted over when we reached there. The roaring wind and stifling snow blinded us so that we had to feel thru the yard to the door of our house. “The lamp was lighted. Mother was walking the floor, wringing her hands and calling for her boys. Pa was shaking the ice and snow from his coat and boots. He had gone out to meet us but was forced back by the storm. We stayed in the house all that night. It was so cold that many people froze.” Although most of the information that was collected or the stories that were told were in South Dakota, Nebraska, North Dakota the temperatures took

Do you ever wonder how insanity comes about through the brain? Paul is the main character in the story “Silent Snow, Secret Snow”. Snow is what paul struggles with throughout the story. It represents the sanity that he has. Whether it is a large or small amount the snow is constantly there. He goes through the story accepting the snow but his parents do not. He then locks himself in his room and just let’s the snow take over him. `In the story “Silent Snow, Secret Snow,” the snow represents the clarity of Paul going insane as the snow is not truly there, the snow clouds his thoughts, and it speaks to him.

The first snowfall of the year had finally arrived one late November night, blanketing the small cabin and surrounding forest with fresh, powdery snow. The wind howled through the leafless trees, often relieving the weighed down branches of their snowy burden. The smooth and unblemished snow coated everything, leaving the road to the cabin indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain.

As I stepped out of the exit door a frigid breeze almost made me an iceberg. I did not feel my hands, legs and it caused pain in my esophagus and ears similar to the pain which I had only experienced when I licked or swallowed ice-candies in India. But this condition was pacified by the “SNOW”. When in India I remember that my family once visited one of the states of India in the Himalayan region to experience snow. During my initial few months over here snow was a pleasure to watch and I didn’t understand the reason for everybody worrying about the snowy days. I felt it needless to worry about so soft, so white, so smooth snow until I had to drive in that not so smooth snow, clean not so soft and white snow and then get exhausted to wait for the so called SPRING.

Throughout the text, Michael mentions the snow. Considering the book’s about a blizzard, that’d be normal, right? However, in my view, the snow symbolizes something, like dreadful times. Scattered around, the context surrounding the snow can be interpreted as how you feel during those times. For example, later in the book, when the students realize just how bad it is, they explain it as, “There was no higher ground, no place left for us to go”(Northrop 158). Here, a relation to people feeling as if there’s nowhere else to go, so they’re trapped in the horrible event occurring can be made. Results tend to be mourning over those poor times in people’s lives. Similarly, Michael connects that to how we view bad situations. Early on in the book, description of the snow is showed as it being “small flakes”, “like grains of sugar… the flakes had fattened up and

To start off with, the snow creates a setting within the story. For example, in the text it says, “I sat up and looked at it for a while. It was like how you can’t see out the window into darkness at night, but anyone out there can see in, if that makes any sense.” (Northrop, page 69) This piece of text demonstrates how the snow creates a setting because the snow surrounded the high school and made the characters feel captive. Similarly, at the beginning of the novel, it says,

4. What happened to the family in “The First Snowfall” is they had lost one of their dear children. The family thought how the big blizzard was wrecking the great tomb in which their child was buried. In the poem “The First Snowfall,” the family began to wonder “I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn where a little headstone stood how the flakes were folding it gently” (17-19). They began to become emotional as the snow was falling and the tomb just laid there in the freezing cold and brought up the poor daughter and the sadness of her death. The family lost one of their daughters and the snow made them remember the awful loss and the tomb being buried.

In The First Snowfall, Lowell demonstrates the Romantic element of reverence for nature through the descriptions and dialogue of the snowfall’s restoring nature, implying that the snowfall can subdue the narrator’s pain and usher him to move on. Reverence for nature is the romantic belief that God resides and works through nature, providing it with an authority over the individual. The First Snowfall recounts the father’s memories of his past heartbreaks regarding his dead, first-born daughter. As the father observes the snowfall, he narrates that “[t]he stiff rails were softened to swan’s-down, / [a]nd still

As winter continues, Haskell examines the newly fallen snow during the early moments of sunrise. While most people find beauty in the large blanket of snow that

We received no food. We lived on snow; it took the place of bread. The days resembled nights, and the nights left in our souls the dregs of their darkness. The train rolled slowly, often halted for a few hours, and continued. It never stopped snowing. We remained lying on the floor for days and nights, one on top of the other, never uttering a word. We were nothing but frozen bodies. Our eyes closed, we merely waited for the next stop, to unload our dead. (100)

why he stopped, may be he doesn’t know himself. May be, he is comparing the beauty of nature to something, but on a symbolic level, the snow strongly reminds me that the poem is set in winter, and which is also widely represented as the image of death.

A poem is an experience, not a thought. It is an experience both the author and the reader share with one another. Authors of poems use tones, keywords, hidden messages, irony, and diction to create their work. They use these tactics so the reader thinks about what they are reading and try evaluating what the message is that the reader wants to get across. In the poem “Snow” by Louis MacNeice, he uses these same characteristics to get the readers mind active in the words. Let’s examine the poem “Snow” and see what the meaning behind this poem is.

On a snowy and windy night, I was at Barnes & Noble in Green Bay with my friends, Alan and Karina. Christmas music played overhead, the smell of hot chocolate and freshly brewed coffee wafted over, the customers were kind and cheerful, and snow was beginning to blanket the parking lot outside. We were sitting near the cafe wrapping books to support their mom’s school fundraiser. I stared outside and remembered my mom’s warning of the large snowfall that was almost upon us. Around 7:15, the snowflakes were becoming larger and we could barely see outside the window.