Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken - Essay Example

Silent Snow, Secret Snow: A Narrative on Mental Illness that uses Metaphor, Alliteration, Sibilance and Personification to Express the Experience Introduction The coming of snow, the soft falling of white that blankets the Earth over night and makes everything still, quiet, and clean. Snow is a metaphor for many things, some having to do with covering, some having to do with an extension of water, and some having to do with quiet. In his short story, Silent Snow, Secret Snow written in 1934, Conrad Aiken explores the nature of snow in combination with the nature of mental illness as it begins to overwhelm a young boy. Snow becomes the focus, the symbol, and the torment of the descent that the child takes as he crosses from mental health into mental disintegration. It is not even just snow, but the thought of snow, that becomes the overwhelming preoccupation of the child, Paul, as the world fades from his present and he becomes absorbed in the concept snow, even as it begins to become a living sentient thing within his mind. Through metaphor, alliteration, sibilance, and personification, the concept of snow becomes transformed into the embodiment of the mental illness that is plaguing the protagonist in Conrad Aiken’s short story, Silent Snow, Secret Snow. In a story like Aiken’s, the narrative is from the perspective someone who is afflicted by the presence of an illness. According to Donley and Buckley, “narratives ’teach us how to be human’ and thus are essential for the understanding of each other” (xiii). The nature of the narrative is to develop a perspective on a situation, the understanding of how being human is being experienced within the framework of the events that are affecting life. Donley and Buckley go on to say that “Especially in the health care professions, where the patient may be referred to by symptom or diagnosis, (i.e., the schizophrenic, the neurotic, the manic-depressive), narratives remind us there is a whole complex person with a life story in which this particular illness may be just a small anecdote” (xiii). In the short story by Aiken, the sense of the protagonists life is given to the reader through the way in which he is experiencing the loss of his old life and the appearance of an obsession that is typifying his new framework of experience. His life is now a living metaphor, the way in which his mind manifests his illness becoming an extension of the metaphor for life and for a life that is frozen and no longer in healthy growth. Water and Snow The nature of snow is based in its chemistry, the way in which it is an alternative expression of water. Water is the resource of life, the substance in which all matter of organic construction is based within this world. Water symbolizes a great number of things from a literary standpoint, including renewal, health and life. In a film, rain will often symbolize a washing away of the problems of the characters and the development of a new and fresh emotional connection. This can be found when a couple stands in the rain, finally discovering their feelings for one another and ending with that event filled kiss. The importance of water is what makes it a powerful metaphor, representing a great many aspects of life, as well as representing life itself. When it is formed into snow, it is frozen, beginning a path towards the inability to move. Sometimes this can mean emotions, the direction of life, or even the inability to move. Snow can represent a blanket that holds everything still in time, falling pristine into the world and keeping it in place until something comes along and disturbs it, changing what once was into a new configuration. Water is life, where snow is its stasis, the ability to hold it in time or to freeze it in place without movement or growth, but also without destruction. It can be the stillness before the emergence of spring or the beginning of renewal, but in the case of the story by Aiken, it is the beginning of an unending stillness that will grasp the protagonist and hold him into place, forcing him under a blanket, a covering of ’otherness’ in which his internal world is separated from the external. Metaphor For the protagonist in Aiken’s short story, snow is the focus, the symbol of what is happening to him and the metaphor for transformation from action to stillness. Snow is his protection, his tormentor, and the entity that has turned his life from the external toward the internal. His focus on snow had begun before the beginning of the story, his thoughts on snow, he tells the reader, had been a longing he had felt all winter. When his imagination took hold and he not only wished for the snow, but believed in the existence of snow outside, the reader is brought up to this point of his focus, seeing the subtle shift which is represented by his description of the snow that he believes is outside as he lays in his bed thinking about the footsteps of the postman and how they seem suddenly muffled. He says “the long white ragged lines were drifting and sifting across the street, across the faces of the old houses, whispering and hushes, making little triangles of white in the corners between cobblestones, seething a little when the wind blew them over the ground to a drifted corner; and so it would be all day, getting deeper and deeper and silenter and silenter” (Aiken 97). In this moment, the drifting of his mind, the way in which he is no longer anchored in the reality of his existence, is suddenly emergent. Snow is used to provide a barrier between the protagonist and the world. Snow falls and blankets the ground, putting to sleep and into silence the teeming life of what is underneath, slowing down the insects, the growth of grass, and the birth of new life as seeds are held in waiting and growth is impeded until the climate is no longer inhospitable. Snow becomes a barrier between the boy and the world. Aiken writes “he had kept with him a sense of snow falling about him, a secret screen of new snow between himself and the world” (Aiken 97). The boy is finding himself held back, separated from the world by a blanket of snow that is getting deeper and creating more distance between himself and his external world. The postman is also used as a metaphor. In the beginning, the footsteps of the postman are seen as a disturbance of the snow, making footprints in the fresh fallen snow that until his footfall would be pristine. However, as the snow continues to be the focus of the boy, he states “he had noticed that the presence of the snow was a little more insistent, the sound of it clearer; and conversely, the sound of the postman’s footsteps more indistinct” (Aiken 98). What the boy thought he would here outside his house, he did not on the fateful morning when the distinction between his internal and external world began to rip, the fabric of his existence suddenly having a disturbance in the form of a separation in which he would not able to fully penetrate the blanket of snow to become the boy that his potential had promised. The postman was a reality, a tangible entity that was in the external world where his presence was dependable, but then his footsteps didn’t fall, not the way he had come to know them to be heard and the boy’s mind began to develop a barrier between himself and the world. Alliteration and Sibilance The use of the letter ‘s’ is used to emphasize the softness of the fall of the snow, the sound repeating throughout much of the story in clusters in order to give the reader a sense of the essence of the feeling within Paul’s head. Aiken writes, again the same passage further explored, “the second day, perhaps the sixth, the sound of it clearer; and, conversely, the sound of the postman’s footsteps more indistinct” (Aiken 98). At the same moment that the postman emerges more clearly as a metaphor for the outer world, a sense of sibilance and alliteration becomes defined by the softness of the letter s, the use of it blossoming throughout the work in order to create a sense of what the protagonist is feeling, the imagery in his head interpreted through a visual sense of snow and the sound of softness, which is a mixed sense of the tactile experience. In creating this mix of senses, that sound is a feel, and sight is a sound, the event of his experiences so confusing that even in living within the metaphor of his experience, his mind is transforming into something else. Aiken writes “and more importantly in a sense of mysterious power in his secrecy”. Eventually, however, the peace that is found in the beginning of the story through the idea of new fallen snow gives way to the anger of a storm, the snow thrashing the mind of the boy until the softness is turned into a hissing, a threat that is building over the course of the story. The story has been compared to that of a work by Edgar Allen Poe, perhaps similar to the Tell Tale Heart as the beating of the heart grows in the mind of the protagonist in that work, creating a threat that is driving the lead character towards madness (Wilson 132). Although the initial stages of the experience for Paul are experienced as peaceful, eventually the insistence of the snow within his mind becomes more akin to that kind of pervasive threat, a sound that becomes a barrier that not only stands between the internal and the external, but soon a threat that pushes against the intrusion of the external and is no longer a place of peace. It is the hiss, the sound of the ‘s’ that helps to perpetuate that transition from the soft to the hiss, the peace to the threat. The sibilance of the sound, the repeated hissing that flows throughout the piece helps to build a crescendo that provides the widening of the passage down, the drop from society exacerbated by the deepening of the barrier. Aiken writes ‘gradually the snow was becoming heavier, the sound of its seething louder, the cobblestones more and more muffled” (98). There is this sense that the world is becoming shadowed, a veil of white that hides the exterior and the sweetness with which the focus first provided contentment in the thought of it, now replaced by the impediment that the reality of such a veil provides between the afflicted and the outside world. Personification Eventually, the snow is personified, a living presence that is sentient and with an intent that is contraindicative of a healthy life for Paul. Some of the first signs of this is in talking of it in the sense of a presence, still inanimate, but something to which he could turn and find an emotional relationships. Aiken writes “No fairy story he had ever read could be compared with it - none had ever given him this extraordinary combination of ethereal loveliness with a something else, unnamable, which was just faintly and deliciously terrifying” (102). At this point, the intangible, but growing comfort through which the protagonist is beginning to depend is developing into a sense of an entity with an intent and with motivations to keep Paul from the external world. Eventually, there is the feeling of the snow speaking to him, making promises about the way in which his focus will be rewarded for its attention and for his abandonment of the real world. Aiken writes “it had deliberately put on its manners; it kept itself out of sight, obliterated itself, but with distinctly with an air of saying, ‘Ah, but just wait! Wait until we are alone together! Then I will begin to tell you something new! Something white! Something cold! Something sleepy! Something of cease and peace, and the long curve of space!” (105). The essence of his fantasy was speaking to him, his constructed fairytale, his ecstasy and terror becoming a living, breathing presence within his experience. At the end, he is within the torment, the addiction to his snow becoming an active and exuberant part of his life. At this point, the snow is a monster, responding to others who would intrude on its relationship with Paul. Aiken writes “But then a gash of horrible light fell brutally across the room from the opening door - the snow drew back hissing - something alien had come into the room - something hostile. The ‘other’ was now those outside of his relationship with the snow, the snow now violently defending its position within his life. It had grown from a thought to a focus on a dream of snow that now was flooding his life, actively participating and having opinions and thoughts on the framework of their experience. In the end, the snow has manifested into a presence, a soothing, mollifying presence that insisted on the absence but all but itself. Aiken writes “And with the effort, everything was solved, everything became all right: the seamless hiss advanced once more, the long white wavering lines rose and fell like enormous whispering sea-waves, the whisper becoming louder, the laughter more numerous” (109). The boy was now a lair in which the snow dwelled, protecting its privacy and taking care of its housing, but viciously and violently defending the walls of its home. The boy was no longer the holder of his domain but the presence was alive within him and he was deep within it, his grip on the external subverted by the power of the internal. Conclusion The whole of the event of this boys experience, as it should, is summed up in the final lines. Aiken writes “The hiss was now becoming a roar - the whole world was a vast moving screen of snow - but even now it said peace, it said remoteness, it said cold, it said sleep” (109). The metaphor of the snow was summed up in its hiss as even that transformed, the world becoming this metaphor of snow and in its personification was the promise of escape from the pressure of trying to live in a dichotomy of external versus internal. The boy is inside himself, his world consumed by the internal focus on snow, the snow becoming the manifestation of a disease that was consuming his ability to live in the external. The use of the metaphor of snow provides a context in which to both focus on life and the end of a life as it is known to a peaceful oblivion in which the internal is in control. The use of alliteration and more specifically of sibilance becomes a building crescendo of sound within the work, paralleling the increasing consumption of the snow within his mind. The softness turns to a hiss, the build of the sound within the work becoming manifested into an entity that is the center of the world, at this point, all of the literary tools coming together to enfold the boy into its center. Works Cited Aiken, Conrad. “Silent Snow, Secret Snow” . What's normal?: Narratives of mental & emotional disorders. Ed. Donley, C. C., & Buckley, S. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2000. 95-191. Print. Donley, C. C., & Buckley, S., eds. What's normal?: Narratives of mental & emotional disorders. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2000. Print. Wilson, R. N. Experiencing creativity: On the social psychology of art. New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A: Transaction Books, 1986. Print. Read More