This study will analyze Louis MacNeice's poem "Snow," considering the poetic elements of character, setting, words and symbolism. The study will argue that MacNeice uses these four elements of poetry to show how contradictory and paradoxical life is, and how human consciousness is inevitably baffled as it tries to bring together in a sensical way the disparate and even absurd elements of that life.
Finally, the speaker---and the poem as a whole---find some sort of unification in a surrender of reason and an acceptance of the mystery of life, even though he in his poem is not able to name that mystery in a way which would fit into the limited realm of human reason.
The character of the narrator is itself representative of this paradoxical nature of life. The speaker is at the same time trying to bring together these disparate elements of life and nature, and admitting that it is impossible for him to make sense out of their confusing juxtaposition.
The speaker expresses his character as if he were trying to express two sides of himself as contradictory as snow outside and pink roses inside, separated by only the glass of his window. The character of the speaker must use words to try to explain or describe a mystery which is greater than the ability of words to explain or describe it.
We find the speaker making such word choices as "incompatible," "crazier," "incorrigibly plural," and "drunkenness" as he struggles futilely to bring the overwhelming bounty of the world and of nature down to a scale which his reason can understand. It is clear with such word choices that he recognizes that he cannot reason away the mystery of life, even at the moment that he is trying to do so.
The setting of the poem reinforces the sense of the character's bewilderment at the paradox of life and of nature. The setting itself is established through the use of symbols---the snow and the roses.
It is apparently a period in which the sea...