The Snow Man Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time 5 To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds 15 Nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is. 1923 Modernist literature and poetry are categorized by internal struggles regarding philosophical questions the main characters are having difficulty answering. Wallace Stevens' The Snow Man is the epitome of all modernist characteristics, from content to structure. It is an incredibly difficult poem to comprehend upon first reading; often times it is most important to pay attention to what is not being said, and this certainly is the case for Stevens' famous work. To get a better understanding of modernism in literature and its many facets, it is necessary to examine The Snow Man in relation to another work of the same era. This poetry will be analyzed through the context of The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill. The two works feature many aspects of modernism and are similar in their conclusions: The world we have created for ourselves, manmade products as well as a cognitive sense of the world, essentially means nothing when it is time to die. When looking at the world without attributing human meaning to what we see, we discover the primary realities of life. To gain a better sense of the relationship between the stories, we must dissect the semantic components of The Snow Man line by line. One must have a mind of winter, says Stevens. The very first line of the poem seems simple enough, though there is plenty behind what one sees. He begins to paint a picture of a wintry landscape. Winter, for some, may be a time of misery and desolation. A mind of winter, paired with the title The Snow Man, suggests one must have the head of a snowman, unthinking, unable to attribute meaning. Perhaps unthinking is synonymous with being dead. Yank, the main character in The Hairy Ape, struggles with the simple act of thinking. His fellow firemen shout out loud, Drink! Don't think! Yank simply drowns himself in alcohol so that he cannot think. He is devoid of any thoughts and feelings in his altered state, vacant like the skull of a snow man. To regard the frost and the boughs / of the pine-trees crusted with snow; the poem continues. To regard nature in this context is to relate to nature. When a person dies, they are buried in the earth they must become one with. The simple detail that the snow is crusted, clinging to pine needles suggests this relationship. Similarly, Yank struggles with his identity and finding a sense of belonging. Though he denied it throughout the play, he feels like an animal, and this ultimately leads him to the zoo. It is there that he tries to make friends with a gorilla, essentially facing who he is and trying to come to terms, or make friends, with that aspect of himself. Yuh got what I was sayin' even if yuh muffed de woids. And why wouldn't yuh get me? Ain't we both
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members of de same clubde Hairy Apes? Soon after accepting his fate as becoming one with the primate, he dies. The poem continues, And have been cold a long time / To behold the junipers shagged with ice. In social environments, to be cold is to be unemotional. An excess of coldness can result in a numb feeling, both physically and emotionally. Behold means to observe, and as it contains the word hold it signifies a sense of possession. The ice hanging from the juniper trees is symbolic of fragility, it is cold and hard but it is also prone to breakage. The only emotions that Yank seems to possess are angry and irrational. However, he is numb to the world in which he lives. It is not satisfying for him nor does it provide him any opportunity for growth, whether it be in an educational or professional aspect. Yank beholds the life he has in the stokehole, seeing that this is as far as he will prosper. The possessive sense of the word appears in Yank's mind when he acts as if he is in power. When the engineer blows his whistle, Yank gets angry because he has convinced himself that he is the one in control. He wants to feel more than he truly is, and he begins to identify himself as parts of the ship. I'm de ting in coal dat makes it boin; I'm steam and oil for de engines; I'm de ting in noise dat makes yuh hear it; I'm smoke and express trains and steamers and factory whistles, he says. This exemplifies the possession, as Yank believes he is the essential part of all that makes the ship move. However, he says all of this in response to Mildred Douglas' name calling. Oh, the filthy beast! she cries. Though he puts on a show as a strong, powerful man, Yank unknowingly shows his fragile side, clearly being affected by Mildred's words. Line six and seven read, The spruces rough in the distant glitter / Of the January sun. There is much to be unpacked from this fragment. By now, we can see that Stevens is using several patterns. First is the use sharp words, such as frost, crusted, shagged, rough, and glitter. There is also the use of coniferous trees such as pines, junipers, and spruces. Conifers are characterized by their needles, which fall in line with Stevens' sharp imagery. Perhaps the needles represent life. When one grabs the branch of a pine tree, the needles prick the skin, reminding him he is alive. The poem seems to suggest that everything in the winter image is untouched, therefore there is nothing to remind one of life. Mildred may very well be a pine needle, pricking Yank with her words and reminding him that his life is condemned to the lower class. The distant glitter is representative of Mildred's world. The distance is obvious, an unattainable lifestyle for Yank. However the glitter is symbolic of Mildred's entrapment in her world. It is only a superficial adornment, something that is artificially attractive like her life in the upper class. Though she reaps the benefits of her father's millions, she longs to understand how the other half lives I would like to be some use in this world. Is it my fault I don't know how? she asks. In the third stanza, we begin to see a change in Stevens rhetoric. While the first two stanzas focused on the sense of sight, we are now moving on to sound. And not to think / Of any misery in the sound of the wind, Stevens writes. Going back to the idea of numbness, this line says that one must have become very numb to not feel misery in the wintry air. Being cold a long time can also refer to a deceased body, no longer harboring any feeling of misery. The wind, an influential force, moves horizontally. We can say that Yank is like the wind, constantly moving forward but never up; he will always remain in the lower class. He is not living in misery over this fact, because his dreams of moving upwards, if they ever existed, are dead and gone. In the sound of a few leaves, / Which is the sound of the land / Full of the same wind / That is blowing in the same bare place. The dead leaves have fallen off the trees and are rustling in the wind. This is the sound of the land that holds all of the misery. Perhaps the misery refers to deadness in a desolate sense. The land in winter is quiet, unmoving, deprived of life. Mildred is a product of her father, he is the tree. She now searches for meaning without having any real sense of direction, much like the leaves floating about. I would like to be sincere, to touch life somewhere I'm a waste product of the Bessemer process I inherit the acquired trait of the by-product, wealth, but none of the energy, none of the strength of steel that made it, she says.

She, too, is deprived of life. Mildred goes through all the motions of being an upper class woman but finds nothing invigorating in it. The final line of the poem, For the listener, who listens in the snow / And, nothing himself, beholds / Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is, sends the reader spiraling into confusion. In this context, it seems that to listen is to obey. Whomever is listening is nothing himself, devoid of meaning, hence being in the snow, which as we concluded represented the unthinking mind of winter. Though the double negatives used in nothing that is not there turns into the something that is there, we are not viewing the wintry landscape as something; Stevens carefully worded this phrase so that we understand one is looking what is in front of him without attributing meaning. The listener is beholding what is in front of him and only what is in front of him. There are no extraneous thoughts of how beautiful the icicles are, how melancholic dead trees seem, or how one might wish to make snow angels; it is a clear and simple observation of primary reality and nothing more. What is most baffling upon first read is the following line, the nothing that is. Stevens places the before nothing, therefore making it an abstract object. Perhaps the nothing refers back to nothing himself. He, along with everything else in this picture, is nothing with no human meaning attached. Once we have passed, our minds have stopped working; we are unthinking. All meaning we have placed upon people and objects and nature are nonexistent; everything is what it is. In the eyes of the upper class, Yank is nothing. This is clearly demonstrated in his attempt to disrupt the lives of those above him as they exit the church. While the bourgeoisie walk the streets going about their day, Yank wants to start a row with everyone in his path and they simply dismiss his efforts. Without seeming to see him, they make wide detours to avoid the spot where he stands in the middle of the sidewalk, say the stage directions. He turns into a rage on the men, bumping viciously into them but not jarring them the least bit. Rather, it is he who recoils after each collision. As the poem says, the one who is nothing listens in the snow. The one who is nothing obeys the unthinking mind, and in this fashion, Yank follows his natural instincts. Towards the end, as Yank is realizing he is dying, he sees his world for what it is. He got me, aw right. Im trou. Even him didnt tink I belonged. Christ, where do I get off at? Where do I fit in? The final stage directions offer an interesting point of view, He slips into a heap on the floor and dies And, perhaps, the Hairy Ape at last belongs. This embodies all of the final stanza of The Snow Man. Yank, the hairy ape, listens in the snow; he naturally obeys the nature of dying because of his unthinking mind. He was and eternally will be nothing, though he is now one with the earth. Deceased, he can no longer see any meaning in the world. It is just there and exists to exist. Here is where we come to the conclusion that upon death, everything essentially means nothing. Upon death we cannot attribute human meaning to what we see, we can only view reality at in the most basic sense. Both The Snow Man and The Hairy Ape contain many of the defining characteristics of modernism. A prominent theme is that of alienation or isolation, as well as a fragmented identity. Yank feels very alienated by Mildred's presence. The fact that she even came down the stokehole was offensive to him because he thought she wanted to stare like an animal at the zoo. Her name calling inflicted more pain on Yank, making a very clear display that he does not belong. Both characters are also struggling with their identities and trying to find out who they really are and where they belong. The poem similarly illustrates isolation with its descriptions of the wintry landscape, calm and serene. Modernist characters are also desperately dissatisfied with the present, as they live dehumanized, mechanized lives. Both Yank and Mildred long to be something more than they are. A fireman, Yank moves in routine fashion, going through the motions of what is necessary to make a boat run day in and day out. Mildred finds her life in the upper class utterly boring and wants to validate herself. They reject traditional belief systems of what people in their social class should be doing. Nobody wants Yank to mix with classes above him, nor do they want

Mildred mingling with the working class. The characters question social structures of their time, which is another trait of modernism: suffering from philosophical issues. "Philosophical issues" is an umbrella term for reevaluating archetypes, one's search for meaning, the importance of psychology. The main characters in The Hairy Ape struggle to break free of the archetypal lives they lead. While Yank is stuck in his proletariat position, a mechanical being forever living in routine, Mildred is confined to do and be what the upper class woman should. Both of them want to live differently than their archetypes allow them to; Yank knows nothing but his work as a fireman but is intrigued at the idea of joining the Industrial Workers of the World, and Mildred simply wants to know something other than wealth, which is why she does work with the less fortunate and her reasons for her entrance in the stokehole. What lies in their quest for new identities is their search for meaning, trying to answer questions such as Who am I? and Where do I belong? Mildred and Yank do not feel welcome in their own worlds. What do they do when they cannot assimilate into the only world they have ever known? The result is a disheartening feeling of defeat. Speaking to the gorilla, Yank says, Yuh're lucky, see? Yuh don't belong wit 'em and yuh know it. But me, I belong wit 'embut I don't, see? I ain't on oith and I ain't in heaven, get me? I'm in de middle tryin' to separate 'em, takin' all de woist punched from bot' of 'em. This is a clear illustration of Yank's internal struggle. The Snow Man is a poem about accepting reality in its purest form, which one can only do after death. The poem exemplifies the struggling identity crisis, having to try not to hear the misery in the wind, or feel any misery in the sounds and sights of nature. It highlights the importance of psychology, as it primarily focuses on one's ability to avoid attributing human meaning to his surroundings. Try as you may while alive, but this point of view can only be achieved in the afterlife. The Hairy Ape has much to do with psychology as well, as Yank constantly battles with his mind and his instincts. He has a hard time thinking, therefore he acts solely on emotional instinct, and he performs in mechanical ways because he may feel that is his only form of control. Modernism not only appears in the content of both works, but in the structure as well. A formal feature of literature, syntax and form, are disrupted in modernist writings. For example, O'Neill's characters speak in a very distinct manner, and he writes out the words phonetically so that readers can better understand the character. He risks incoherence through this literary experimentation, as Yank's words are difficult to understand until one becomes accustomed to his rhetoric. There are not many rules in poetry, as it is written however the author wants it to be written; however, Stevens uses three-line stanzas as opposed to the typical two or four, and the entire poem is one single sentence. There are no rhyming phrases in the poem, creating a philosophical pondering in soliloquy. Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape and Wallace Stevens' The Snow Man are both fantastic examples of modernist literature. Each carry their own interpretation of the typical characteristics found in this genre, from literary style to the issues raised within the work. Stevens' poetry is extremely difficult to deconstruct without comparing its meaning to the context of another work of fiction. Using The Hairy Ape as a guide, one can then be able to understand the message of The Snow Man in terms of a modernist outlook.