Essay On The Snow Man

Words: 703
Pages: 3

Wallace Steven’s “The Snow Man,” was a poem from his first book, Harmonium which was published sometime in 1923.
Imagery is very important to Steven’s poem. He writes this poem to portray that one must love nature in order to keep themselves out of the depression that winter brings to many. Even so, this poem is laced with enchanting imagery that allows the reader to visual these wonderful scenes of winter. Steven’s uses one continuous sentence that relies on the word “and.”
Steven’s first stanza says,
“One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;”
In this stanza, he is saying that one must put themselves in the “mind of winter” in order to see these things from the perspective of the snow man.
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Appreciation of these things, the junipers weighed down by the ice and the sun reflecting off rough snow covered spruces.
Steven’s third stanza says,
“Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,”
The depression that winter often brings is hard to avoid, especially if you aren’t one who enjoys nature. The sights may be beautiful, but as humans we are caught up in our minds and our emotions that we get stuck in our cold, miserable thoughts. Steven’s is suggesting how hard it is to escape the “pathetic fallacy” of winter. Being so depressed that you hear “misery in the sound of the wind” and “the sound of a few leaves.”
Steven’s fourth stanza says,
“Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place”
The winter is always so cold and bare matching how the speaker feels. The line, “blowing in the same bare place,” gives the reader the image of leafless trees, seemingly dead but just waiting to thaw out and bloom in the spring