These four stories contain the imagery of "snow" and do so in creatively different fashions.
The first two selections by Butler and Alvarez provide similar metaphors for snow.
I noticed in Butler's piece that to the Vietnamese restaurant worker and the Jewish lawyer, snow was a symbol of death. The Vietnamese woman had seen and thought of snow as covering and killing the wonderful items beneath it. She also thought of herself as dead because of the snow covering the shelter where she was staying in St. Louis. Similarly, the Jewish lawyer associated snow with the death of his father. Every time it snowed, he remembered the moment when his father sent him away from the ever-nearing Nazi regime that planned on killing all Jews. He threw himself onto the frigid snow in protest to his father, and this desperate act of defiance was the symbol that represented his father's death--that he intuitively knew well before news was delivered.
In Alvarez's piece, Yolanda, a young immigrant attending a Catholic school during the Cold War, experiences snow for the first time but interprets snow as nuclear missiles. She is a taught to be afraid of objects falling out the sky and to conduct fall-out drills in preparation for "the end." I thought this piece was interesting because of key terms/ideas: snow and Cold War. Snow is a symbol in Yolanda's mind for a disturbing event on the horizon. It is my inferential judgment that Yolanda, if she was a real person, would associate snow with her first impression of it as being a sign of the end of her life.
Overall, the two stories both connect the "snow" as being related to fear, death, and loss.
Baxter's piece contains snow--based on the setting. However, I noticed the term "snowed" as a synonym for being impressed. "She will be snowed!" (47). I also noticed that the brothers saw Stephanie get snowed (50) as they when on the snowy, icy lake to view the car that broke through the ice.
Beattie--this piece was difficult to follow. I interpreted snow in the last paragraph of the piece as a metaphor for the life span of a person. Snow was used to conceptualize the large mass of life that is unnoticed and that the small, meaningful parts are covered and lost by the enormity, like bird seed being thrown outside while it's snowing heavily.
In closing--all four stories relate snow as being a primarily negative object. Loss, death, somber, and ubiquitously engulfing everything important.
It was interesting and enjoyable to read all four selections and seeing the connections they share.
The first two selections by Butler and Alvarez provide similar metaphors for snow.
I noticed in Butler's piece that to the Vietnamese restaurant worker and the Jewish lawyer, snow was a symbol of death. The Vietnamese woman had seen and thought of snow as covering and killing the wonderful items beneath it. She also thought of herself as dead because of the snow covering the shelter where she was staying in St. Louis. Similarly, the Jewish lawyer associated snow with the death of his father. Every time it snowed, he remembered the moment when his father sent him away from the ever-nearing Nazi regime that planned on killing all Jews. He threw himself onto the frigid snow in protest to his father, and this desperate act of defiance was the symbol that represented his father's death--that he intuitively knew well before news was delivered.
In Alvarez's piece, Yolanda, a young immigrant attending a Catholic school during the Cold War, experiences snow for the first time but interprets snow as nuclear missiles. She is a taught to be afraid of objects falling out the sky and to conduct fall-out drills in preparation for "the end." I thought this piece was interesting because of key terms/ideas: snow and Cold War. Snow is a symbol in Yolanda's mind for a disturbing event on the horizon. It is my inferential judgment that Yolanda, if she was a real person, would associate snow with her first impression of it as being a sign of the end of her life.
Overall, the two stories both connect the "snow" as being related to fear, death, and loss.
Baxter's piece contains snow--based on the setting. However, I noticed the term "snowed" as a synonym for being impressed. "She will be snowed!" (47). I also noticed that the brothers saw Stephanie get snowed (50) as they when on the snowy, icy lake to view the car that broke through the ice.
Beattie--this piece was difficult to follow. I interpreted snow in the last paragraph of the piece as a metaphor for the life span of a person. Snow was used to conceptualize the large mass of life that is unnoticed and that the small, meaningful parts are covered and lost by the enormity, like bird seed being thrown outside while it's snowing heavily.
In closing--all four stories relate snow as being a primarily negative object. Loss, death, somber, and ubiquitously engulfing everything important.
It was interesting and enjoyable to read all four selections and seeing the connections they share.
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