The Blizzard Analysis

“We are in a remote country house, toward evening, a cold blizzard rages.” [Cite] The short, simple, and beautifully written murder mystery play The Blizzard, written by David Ives, begins in a somewhat cliché state. Inside the secluded house in a forest, with the predictably unfavorable weather outside, and no access to technology primarily no external communications. The starting leads to a feeling of unremarkability, that soon the play may become another no name story that hardly leaves a dent in your memory. This dreary beginning in part fits into the themes of the play and in some ways better compliments the more creative middle and end. Ultimately, The Blizzard is a meta play primarily referential to murder mysteries on a whole rather

The Blizzard is no different, if anything the dialog is partially well thought out. The antagonists, Salem and Natasha, are shown to pick their words carefully shortly after they are introduced. Illustrated best their natural repetitions. They are repetitive in multiple ways, the manner that they nearly quote things previously said by the protagonists, repeating a word multiple times in one sentence, and in mimicking one other. This garners various effects, namely eeriness; however it also demonstrates how their words are

That is so Sandy. No imagination, a bit of always thinking ahead, so rational." [Salem] These two lines about the snow chains were the first example; however, this is not the best example of this phenomenon of “near quotation” nor of the repetition as a whole. Actually, Natasha does this best near the end of the play; “You know what it is about murder mysteries? No, listen. I think that the reason people like murder mysteries is that in a murder mystery everything is significant. The people in murder mysteries are living in a significant world, a world where everything is there for a reason. […] Murder mysteries are religious in a way.” [Jenny] In the play’s first conversation between Neil and Jenny, Jenny explains her interest in murder mysteries or why others might like them as well. By the end of the play, Natasha does this as well while using a lot of the same words as