Reader Response to Ann Beattie’s “Snow”

           
            This was a whirlwind of a story. The little details such as the chipmunk and snowplow served as anchors throughout some of my confusion. I finished reading without completely understand the plot, but emotionally I think I grasped what Beattie wanted to convey. I liked that I got a good sense of the contrast between the narrator and her lover through the different perspectives each had about their time at the snow.

            The narrator sees her lover as a “crazy king of snow” and romanticizes many aspects of her time there. The fireplace is enchanting because it spurs all these stories that also have romantic elements to it. I could tell how in love the narrator was just by the things she picked up on. She sees the walls as having grapes with the “vine popping through, the way some plants can tenaciously push through anything”, which I saw as her seeing life and the romance flourishing.  The imagery is beautiful in this perspective and it made me believe that these things were exactly as they are. Until we get the lover’s perspective, I felt as convinced as the narrator that love was literally in the air.

            When the shift in tone occurs, we lose that white innocence for something darker, drearier. The narrator carries an emphasis on “night” and “black.” The lover has a more realistic, even pessimistic view of their time together. This is a story I think a lot of people can relate to and even learn from. We all tend to look at things we want through this narrow lens and are unable to use rationality to see what’s really going on. I find it interesting that we get the narrator’s intimate details about the event, but only an analysis of her lover’s. We know how she feels about the walls, the people, and the snow. Yet we don’t know how he feels about those things, perhaps because he didn’t think much of them at all? I also found it interesting that the chipmunk serves as a point of consistency for both persons. The characters view them differently, but they both see the animal running off to some purpose. I can't quite figure out how I feel about it, but it piqued my interest.

            My favorite part of this story is when the narrator poses the question: “Who expects small things to survive when even the largest get lost?” I found this true to the narrator because we only get the moments she chooses to share and not the other details. She has isolated the instances that are persistent in her mind because the bigger idea, which I saw represented through the image of snow, is that she loved someone and they didn’t love her back the way he should have. It’s the image of snow and the snowplow that carries weight even after she visits that place again. I related this to my life because there are some little things I remember so vividly and other times that span across months that I only remember vaguely.