Imagine this: You are new at school, and in the country, living in a strange looking city. You are starting to like and fit in at school when you hear talk about getting attacked, and a tense feeling lingers as the days become colder. One day you see dusty fallout alerting you of the attack. You scream and hide just to realize it's not fallout. It's snowing. This was what happened in the story “Snow” by Julia Alvarez, where a young girl moves to America during the Cold War. Throughout the story, the tone shifts drastically as we see Yolanda experiencing the fear that was apparent during that time. After reading through the passage it is clear that that tone and mood shift from curiosity and pleasantness, to an unnerving state of mind, and finally …show more content…
The author writes, “Our first year in New York we rented a small apartment with a Catholic school nearby, taught by the Sisters of Charity, hefty women in long black gowns and bonnets that made them look peculiar, like dolls in mourning.” Yolanda is new to New York and America as a whole. Meaning she would be curious around her new surroundings and describe them with words like “peculiar”, and this sets up the story’s tone to be full of wonder and curiosity. In that same paragraph she wrote, “I liked them a lot, especially my grandmotherly fourth grade teacher, Sister Zoe.” Yolanda uses the word “grandmotherly” to imply that her teacher is welcoming and pleasant, like a grandmother would be to their grandchild. This word also adds to the mood of the paragraph by making it pleasant and safe. These words used in the first paragraph give us an understanding of the tone that is being implied in this specific paragraph, which is wonderful and enjoyable. Then the story gives us some subtle word choices that imply an unsafe or unnerving feeling when Yolanda is informed about the Cold War and the possible threats that it may pose to
In Julia Alvarez’s short story, “Snow,” an immigrant student, named Yolanda is learning the American way of doing things. She learns that there is ugly and hatful war going on in the world around her. Sister Zoe, Yolanda’s catholic school teacher, explains to her and her classmates what a bomb is; a mushroom shaped explosion with white specks of dust filling the air. However, when Yolanda sees actual winter snow for the first time, she confuses this snow as bomb dust. After Sister Zoe explains that
writers and gives a variety of different perspective on certain life experiences. In Julia Alvarez’s short story Snow, Yolanda, an immigrant student, moved to New York. While attending a Catholic school in New York, bomb drills were performed. The teacher would explain why these drills were important. Yolanda later found out that her first experience of watching snow was not the best experience one could possibly have. Julia Alvarez was an example of how a Latina writer identified herself in a new culture