Most children were being sent on their way home and most adults were working in their farms. The storm hit mostly rural areas in Nebraska, South Dakota, northern Kansas, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Winds were extremely high and temperatures fell to 40 below zero, the temperature dropped almost 100 degrees in 24 hours according to some accounts. The heavy snows created zero visibility. The blizzard was so severe it left trains unable to run for hours.
As Elie Wiesel wrote of the death march to Gleiwitz, he used narrative techniques such as descriptive language and similes to illustrate how gruesome it was to take part in. From the first sentence Wiesel wrote in chapter six, he used descriptive language to explain the appalling conditions. “An icy wind was blowing violently” (85, Wiesel). The words such as icy, blowing, and violently are used here to imprint a picture of what might have been a blizzard during the march in the minds of the reader. However, Wiesel continues to use techniques throughout the chapter to provide a more vivid picture.
David Laskin’s The Children’s Blizzard explains the devastating force of an intense blizzard, which caught several people unprepared, and it tells the tragic stories of these people. On January 12, 1888 a massive blizzard struck the center of North America, killing between 250 to 500 people and affecting thousands. There were many factors that made this blizzard exceptionally deadly. Many farmers and children who were outside were unprepared to deal with any cold conditions, “a day when children had raced to school with no coats or gloves and farmers were far from home doing chores they had put off during the long siege of cold” (Laskin 2).
Someone even wrote a song titled “The Murderous Blizzard”. No typical blizzard will ever compare to it, none in history. The death tolled could have been minimal or better yet nonexistent if there had been technology in place to protect the people in those counties. As well as if there was someone in that telegraph office to receive the alert and communicated it to the resident of those counties in order to prepare for
For those Buffalonians who are old enough to remember it, the Blizzard of 1977 is a memory that has been seared into their consciousness. January 28th 1977, began as a normal day for the city of Buffalo, but by twelve noon the wind picked up, snow began to fall, and visibility became dangerously limited. As the wind began to intensify out of the west and sweep across the frozen wasteland of Lake Erie, it carried with it the lightly packed snow that had blanketed the frozen lake. An event of historical proportions was beginning to unfold in rapid time right in front of people’s eyes. Accumulating more and more snow as the wind moved eastward, the wind was carrying so much snow that it created white out conditions in the city and surrounding area.
From day one of Nick Carraway’s arrival, to the tragic ending of the Gatsby story, the weather continues to play a big part in predicting what’s to come. While reading, the weather might seem to be of little importance, but looking back, it’s hard to miss its meaning. The weather in The Great Gatsby, foreshadows character behaviors and gives insight on certain events and people in the novel. Fitzgerald uses the theme of weather through a combination of temperature and wind, rain storms, and hot summer days all while intertwining it into the character’s lives.
Many more books show a usage of weather in their story, this combined to give an audience a profound piece of literature. The weather development predicted many conflicts of the
Not the little cute snowflakes you see on TV while watching your favorite holiday movies, but lots of snow. It was the kind of snow that is unimaginable at least to me, at that time of my life. I have never seen it snow before, and as the cold white snow blows along the road and sticks to the window I holler oh my God.
“Popular Mechanics” use the time of year and weather to show the mood of the story. In “Hills Like White Elephants” where they are and the landscape around them show what is happening in the story. In “Popular Mechanics” Carver starts the story off with the time of year and weather that shows what the mood of the story will be: “the snow was melting into dirty water. Streaks of it ran down from the little shoulder-high window that faced the backyard. Cars slushed by on the street outside, where it was getting dark.”
Weather Representing Emotions Normally weather and emotions are not associated, but throughout the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald makes multiple references comparing the feelings of Jay Gatsby to the weather outside. He uses rain to represent the times of sadness or awkward situations. When those moods uplifted the clouds would break, and the sun would shine. Other times he would use heat to represent times of anger, or tension.
In many poems, poets use nature as a metaphor for human life. In "Storm Warnings" by Adrienne Rich, she uses an approaching storm as a metaphor for an emotional storm inside herself. Although, there is a literal meaning of the poem. There really is an incoming storm. Rich uses structure, specific detail, and imagery to convey the literal and metaphorical meanings of the poem.
The impact of the weather scene is a way to indirectly relate to the murder of Victor’s young brother, William. The author, Shelley utilizes weather to convey the Victor’s emotional feelings about the murder of his bother William. Through imagery in the quote, Shelley is able to utilize words to describe the weather relating them to both the storm and what has happened to our protagonist. To me, the flashes of light illuminate the lake which is his brother. William’s illumination is the light of his life is soon quenched when the author describes the “pitchy darkness”
Snow serves as a symbol of the love the couple once shared together. The narrator explains the night of the “big snow”, “Remember the night, out on the lawn, knee-deep in snow, chins pointed to the sky as the wind whirled down all that whiteness?” (108) which is a symbol of the climax of the love and happiness shared between the two lovers. However, the narrator uses the idea of snow once again, “just a few dots of white, no field of snow” (109) to contrast the previous image. The few dots of white symbolize the absence or dwindling of love and affection that was once shared in the house the narrator passes by.
The day was just after my brother’s birthday and we had just finished celebrating his birthday. My brother was more surprised, however, by the amount of snow that covered the yards outside. We both awoke to a sight much more impressive than that of December, a white landscape obscuring everything laying on the ground, including the cars. My brother and I changed faster than firemen getting ready for a rescue, as we ran outside to see the fascinating snow that surrounded our neighborhood.