“The Same Bare Place:” Perception and Setting in Wallace Stevens’ “The Snow Man” kalista pouget College

The desolate winter setting of “The Snow Man” by Wallace Stevens symbolizes society’s emotional alienation. Published in 1923, the modernist poem proposes that one’s individual experience influences how they process audiovisual information. In this essay, I will discuss how the poem’s speaker, subject, and setting present the effect of one’s perspective on their perception of reality. For example, Stevens compares winter to an absence of emotion, describing the result of truly detached observation. I will also analyze the historical context and implications of such metaphor and symbolism. As a modernist poem, “The Snow Man” emphasizes individual consciousness — the personal filter through which one perceives the world. Considering the view of scholar Mei-shu Chen, I will conclude by examining the role of emotion in the poem, as well as the conundrum of the snow man’s nothingness. Ultimately, I argue that the poem’s setting communicates the alienation of members of modern society as a result of industrialization and World War I.

To begin, the detached tone of the poem’s omniscient speaker is evident from the opening line: “One must have a mind of winter” (Stevens 1). The third person imperative clause “one must have” establishes...