After the endless winter of 2013-14, I should have tossed the painted wooden “Let It Snow” decoration I had foolishly hung outside my house right after Thanksgiving. I never put it up this winter. Made no difference. Winter returned, bringing historic snowfalls and record-shattering low temperatures to many places. How can snow look so magical as it floats down from the sky to soften the landscape, then become so miserable so quickly?

In literature, snow elicits the full spectrum of emotions. It can cleanse and purify. It can obscure. It can save life or kill it. It falls slowly and softly, whistles up a wind or comes crashing down. It’s an end or a beginning. It’s all in the telling.

Robert Frost paints a lovely picture in Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening. Turning snow into an ominous metaphor, Richard Wright’s Native Son hatches a desperate plan while walking in a blizzard. James Joyce beautifully describes snow falling and gathering on every surface in The Dead. In Jack London’s Call of the Wild, readers share a Southern California boy’s introduction to snow as he learns to survive and eventually become one with the challenging environment of the Klondike. The frozen scenes in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein were inspired by a trip she took to see a stretch of glacier at the side of the Mont Blanc massif. As backdrop, plot device or symbolism, snow will always find a welcome place in literature.

Snow is not limited to genre, writing format or author, as shown in these examples:

Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness. – Mary Oliver

It snowed all week. Wheels and footsteps moved soundlessly on the street, as if the business of living continued secretly behind a pale but impenetrable curtain. In the falling quiet there was no sky or earth, only snow lifting in the wind, frosting the window glass, chilling the rooms, deadening and hushing the city. At all hours it was necessary to keep a lamp lighted, and Mrs. Miller lost track of the days: Friday was no different from Saturday and on Sunday she went to the grocery: closed, of course. – Truman Capote

Snow’s all right on a fine morning, but I like to be in bed when it’s falling. – J.R.R. Tolkien

Well, I know now. I know a little more how much a simple thing like a snowfall can mean to a person. – Sylvia Plath

If I look out the window of my back yard these days, I am likely to see snowflakes floating or dancing. In flurries or clear, still air, I see the glistening blanket of white that has truly frozen in time over recent weeks. I’m ready to curl up with a good book by the fireplace. I know just the piece of kindling I will use to feed the young flames.