Snow

Snow often represents many things. Typically, poetry that takes place in the winter leverages the cold bleakness of the season to express feelings of isolation, sadness, and death. Ice and snow are usually part of this imagery.

Berman uses snow in a similar way, though like most of the poem, the symbolism is unique. The speaker of the poem personifies the snow, turning it into an angel. The snow angels in the fallen snow become the actual remains of angels, turning what should be a childish image (the snow angel) into something twisted and almost sacrilegious.

Berman personifies the snow, and he also uses the snow to craft an intriguing metaphor. At the end of the poem, the speaker compares the outdoors to a room, and in that room, the snow acts as the walls. However, because the snow is falling, the walls are “blasted to shreds” (Line 14). This is a unique way of describing falling snow, but it links with the earlier description of angels dissolving as they hit the ground (Line 4).

The snow can easily be symbolic of the coldness of the speaker’s heart, but it could also be symbolic of the innocence of the younger brother.