Paper 5: Formal Analysis

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Paper 5: Formal Analysis
Families develop on the trust of the couples who end up bringing intelligent and morally upright children. Every society has its value for the morals and taboos that it holds onto so as to maintain sanity in the community. However, there are cases where individuals rise against these taboos to meet their personal interests. It is even worse when parents of a trustworthy family get involved in such socially compromised behaviors. Associated with that, Elizabeth Strout in her short story Snow Blind introduces the readers to families that live a covered antisocial life in the quest of fulfilling their desires. Even though, Strout presents it metaphorically, snow blindness, the major theme of the story can be analyzed with the aid of the literary elements such as the central characters, the central conflict, and the setting analysis as well.
Strout in her story introduces the readers to central characters as Annie Appleby, Clayton Appleby. Annie Appleby, one of the most aggressive and youngest children in their community, is a daughter of Clayton and Sylvia. She develops as one of the successful child in the family who happens to meet an exposure to the outside world where she receives a lot of rewards and kindness from her promoters in the world enchantment. Annie being a lover of the woods she is instructed by her father not to go into the woods anymore, what she feels was unfair (Strout 311-3112). Moreover, she worries about the understanding about looking at the snow when the sun was bright claiming that she would get blind which even her grandmother insists never to look at the blinding snow.

The snow blindness would result as a matter of Annie knowing the truth that revolves around her family and her homosexual father. Despite Clayton Appleby, Annie’s father, having been married to Sylvia, prefers driving the children to school because he wants to feel close to his lover, Seth Potter (Strout 318). His homosexual behavior is kept a secret between his wife and the grandmother until it drives him insane, the reality behind snow blindness.
Apart from that, the central conflict in the Strout’s story revolves around social misconduct. The society is embedded with restrictive taboos and moral guidelines that every member has to adhere to regardless of their differences. It is unfortunate that Clayton, a husband to Sylvia, and Seth Potter involve in an intimate relationship known as homosexuality (Strout 315). However, despite this affair being known by Annie’s grandmother and her mother they end trying to find a solution without revealing to the rest of the family what it is all about they seek to find help for Clayton (Strout 311). Nonetheless, Sylvia is not embarrassed by her homosexual husband due to the presence of the family that she has a responsibility to care for, a snow blindness, that stops her from making an alternative decision.
Besides that, the setting of the story introduces the readers to a fairy tale of snow blindness. Strout makes use of the weather to hide the ideas of her story, particularly the theme snow blindness that details about the hidden truth and the impact of knowing the truth. The weather an in the north of the potato country was overtaken by the snow, the snow that the whole family of Appleby could not evade that is the social misconduct of family man. Furthermore, Annie’s family is metaphorically placed at the end of a dirty road on the route 4 at the beginning (Strout 306). However, once their homosexual father is taken to a caregiving center, the way is later described as a clean paved route 4 that was no longer narrow (Strout 14). The setting presented in the story unravels the impact of the snow blindness to Clayton’s family.
A family relies on reasonable responsibility taking by all the members. Failure to adhere to societal morals would bring shame to the household members causing the snow blindness. The use of literary elements, particularly, central characters, central conflict, and setting analysis are essential in the analysis of Strout’s main idea in the Snow Blind.
Work Cited
Strout, Elizabeth. “Snow Blind”. O. Henry Prize Stories, Laura Furman, 1st ed., Anchor, 2015, pp. 306-318,.