• In total there are 10 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 10 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 789 on Tue Mar 19, 2024 5:08 am

Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken - a short story discussion

A dedicated forum for discussing and celebrating your favorite short stories and short story authors.
Forum rules
Do not promote books in this forum. Instead, promote your books in either Authors: Tell us about your FICTION book! or Authors: Tell us about your NON-FICTION book!.

All other Community Rules apply in this and all other forums.
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Re: Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken - a discussion

Unread post

Robert Tulip wrote:quote]And yet it still does not pose a wider threat like a zombie virus, so the emotion is more pity than fear.
Much of the horror genre, though, pertains to things that are really not likely to happen. That distance from actuality accounts for our ability to find zombie apocalypses entertaining. A child transforming into autism or another mental illness cuts closer to the bone. That really does happen. The horror here would be felt by the mother upon hearing her child cry, "I hate you!" She knows those words mean much more than the fits of temper common to children.
User avatar
Taylor

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
Awesome
Posts: 962
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 7:39 pm
14
Location: Florida
Has thanked: 423 times
Been thanked: 591 times

Re: Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken - a discussion

Unread post

Despite Paul's insistence that he is well;, To the reader of 'Silent Snow, Secret Snow' and the adults examining him, there is clearly a problem of isolation. Paul is reverting to a life in his own mind. Escapism. It is a horrifying story, not because Paul is directing his actions. nor is it a horror born of parental short coming. It is a horror because it reveals the maelstrom of an unbalanced human brain.

Paul controls nothing, his subconscious is rebelling in the way it sometimes happens. In reading the wiki page on Conrad Aiken, I learned that his father shot and killed his wife, then himself. What a thing for a child then adult to learn to deal with. I had never heard of Aiken but now I have a respect for what must have been a very complex mind.

He brilliantly demonstrates that complexity with 'Silent Snow'. There was at the time very little understanding of mental disorder of which he had to endeavor to come to terms with. What a haunting life we live, when we live the internal life of unconditioned mind.

The first time I ever considered suicide I was a boy of about ten. I talked to a friend of mine about it briefly at the time. his eleven year old brain told me I was nuts for thinking death was preferable and I never mentioned it again for forty two years. Yes Robert, I know someone who retreated to fantasy. It is a weird pit of utter despair, it is a maelstrom.

There is a comfort zone, it is post-depression and pre-mania, it is a delicate and difficult swirl to tread, especially to a conditioned mind, because there are real horrors with every potential joy. No matter how successful one can be in life, for some, there is no happiness.
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6499
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2719 times
Been thanked: 2662 times
Contact:
Australia

Re: Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken - a discussion

Unread post

Taylor wrote:Despite Paul's insistence that he is well;, To the reader of 'Silent Snow, Secret Snow' and the adults examining him, there is clearly a problem of isolation. Paul is reverting to a life in his own mind. Escapism. It is a horrifying story, not because Paul is directing his actions. nor is it a horror born of parental short coming. It is a horror because it reveals the maelstrom of an unbalanced human brain.
Interesting to cross-reference our last story, Poe’s A Descent into the Maelstrom, which could also be read as a personal parable of mental illness, the isolation of an unbalanced human brain sinking into depressive fantasy. It is a disturbing idea that most would rather not think about, much less discuss in public, and yet I suspect far more common than we usually admit. So Secret Snow is a good entry point for such a discussion.
Taylor wrote: Paul controls nothing, his subconscious is rebelling in the way it sometimes happens. In reading the wiki page on Conrad Aiken, I learned that his father shot and killed his wife, then himself. What a thing for a child then adult to learn to deal with. I had never heard of Aiken but now I have a respect for what must have been a very complex mind.
To say that it is his “subconscious” may place a specific analytic fix on the story, reading what may be a genetic illness of the brain as an involuntary response to suppressed trauma. We do not know if Paul has suffered any trauma that causes his retreat into the snow world as a return of the repressed.
Taylor wrote: He brilliantly demonstrates that complexity with 'Silent Snow'. There was at the time very little understanding of mental disorder of which he had to endeavor to come to terms with. What a haunting life we live, when we live the internal life of unconditioned mind.
I’m not sure the understanding of mental disorder is really that much better today. In the past, religion had an important role in creating community identity and inculcating values, which could have had some protective function against wayward thinking and isolation. But since religion has its own fantasy component, it has been subject of rational critique, often leaving people to their own devices, meaning an overstretched medical profession is left to pick up the pieces using medication, since actually speaking with people is so expensive. These days Paul would be straight onto Ritalin or some other drug to mask his depressive symptoms.
Taylor wrote: The first time I ever considered suicide I was a boy of about ten. I talked to a friend of mine about it briefly at the time. his eleven year old brain told me I was nuts for thinking death was preferable and I never mentioned it again for forty two years.
Thank you Taylor for sharing your personal story. Australia has a suicide epidemic especially among indigenous people. A few people close to me have killed themselves, which I have found very traumatic. For myself there is such a vast amount I want to accomplish in the world that such a thought is not something I entertain.
Taylor wrote: Yes Robert, I know someone who retreated to fantasy. It is a weird pit of utter despair, it is a maelstrom.
Silent Snow presents the retreat to fantasy as a sort of universal parable. The terrible thing is that many people who claim to have the strongest opposition to fantasy are themselves unwitting victims of it. We’re all living in our own private Idaho. This returns me to my favourite topic, the meaning of myth. For Paul, the snow has a sort of mythological function, creating meaning to push back despair and emptiness. For the broader society, our shared values exercise a similar role of warding off the abyss, with varying levels of coherence. Belief in the Blessed Virgin Mary is like secret snow, with the problem that its acolytes have public power, and their fantasy bubbles up as mental disturbance manifested as abuse.
Taylor wrote: There is a comfort zone, it is post-depression and pre-mania, it is a delicate and difficult swirl to tread, especially to a conditioned mind, because there are real horrors with every potential joy. No matter how successful one can be in life, for some, there is no happiness.
The B52s wrote:Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo
Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo

You're living in your own Private Idaho
Living in your own Private Idaho
Underground like a wild potato
Don't go on the patio
Beware of the pool
Blue bottomless pool
It leads you straight, right through the gate
That opens on the pool

You're living in your own Private Idaho
You're living in your own Private Idaho

Keep off the path, beware of the gate
Watch out for signs that say "hidden driveways"
Don't let the chlorine in your eyes
Blind you to the awful surprise
That's been waitin' for you at
The bottom of the bottomless blue, blue, blue pool

You're livin' in your own Private Idaho, Idaho
You're out of control, the rivers that roll
You fell into the water and down to Idaho
Get out of that state
Get out of the state you're in
You better beware

You're living in your own Private Idaho
You're living in your own Private Idaho

Keep off the patio (your own private Idaho)
Keep off the path (your own private Idaho)
The lawn may be green but you better not be seen
Walkin' through a gate that leads you down
Down to a pool fraught with danger
It's a pool full of strangers

Hey, you're living in your own Private Idaho
Where do I go from here to a better state than this?
Well
Don't be blind to the big surprise
Swimming round and round like the deadly hand
Of a radium clock
At the bottom
Of the pool

I-I-I-daho
I-I-I-daho
Woah-oh, woah-oh, woah-oh, oh
Ah, ah, ah, ah
Ah, ah, ah, ah
Get out of that state
Get out of that state
You're living in your own Private Idaho
Livin' in your own Private Idaho
Last edited by Robert Tulip on Fri Jun 02, 2017 3:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Re: Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken - a discussion

Unread post

Despite Paul's insistence that he is well;, To the reader of 'Silent Snow, Secret Snow' and the adults examining him, there is clearly a problem of isolation. Paul is reverting to a life in his own mind. Escapism. It is a horrifying story, not because Paul is directing his actions. nor is it a horror born of parental short coming. It is a horror because it reveals the maelstrom of an unbalanced human brain.
Well said. I do think of escapism, though, as something pretty innocent, kind of like the summer blockbuster movies that come out. It seems here that there is a real disease process, as you also say. I imagine that a psychologist's evaluation of Paul when he was nominally normal would have described a distant and socially odd person. He's susceptible to something like complete Schizoid withdrawal, and there happens to be trigger, but there seems to be nothing special about it. I don't think Aiken was necessarily shooting for clinical accuracy with this story. For this to happen to a boy of 12 is very rare, but probably every parent is acquainted with the fear of a child suddenly going bonkers.

Because of a fear of autistic withdrawal, many parents in the U.S. are foregoing the MMR vaccine, a refusal that has already produced some resurgence of measles, a dangerous disease.
User avatar
Taylor

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
Awesome
Posts: 962
Joined: Sun Dec 06, 2009 7:39 pm
14
Location: Florida
Has thanked: 423 times
Been thanked: 591 times

Re: Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken - a discussion

Unread post

DWill wrote: I do think of escapism, though, as something pretty innocent, kind of like the summer blockbuster movies that come out.
I'm all for escapist story telling. Whether it be written or film or what have you. I do like a good yarn or just an honest story and most especially...a good laugh. I guess with 'Silent Snow' I was looking for something sinister and in the process was reading more into it than is really there. I do that sometimes...look for things. Deep Purple wrote a song years ago called 'Chasing Shadows'...I think its what I've done with Aiken.
Robert Tulip wrote: We do not know if Paul has suffered any trauma that causes his retreat into the snow world as a return of the repressed.
I tried hard to find a driver for Paul's slippage but you are right...there is no indicator. The snow is opaque...its a veil...a mystery. When I relate that to Aiken's personal history I find that Paul's mystery has context.
Robert Tulip wrote:The terrible thing is that many people who claim to have the strongest opposition to fantasy are themselves unwitting victims of it. We’re all living in our own private Idaho.
.

Its seems to me that the mental thing is very subtle and I agree that a great many are unwitting.


Potato Headism...Is there such a thing? Can it be julienned from myth?. :hmm:.

While I'm being absurd; I've never heard someone complain of being long a nut :blush:
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6499
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2719 times
Been thanked: 2662 times
Contact:
Australia

Re: Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken - a discussion

Unread post

Taylor wrote: The snow is opaque...its a veil...a mystery. …the mental thing is very subtle and I agree that a great many are unwitting.
I keep liking this story more and more the more I think about it. It reads to me as a parable for the operation of delusion in religion and politics, in the pervasive ability to exclude unwelcome perceptions. So your description of the snow as a subtle opaque mystery veil helps to see how similar psychological problems operate more broadly.

For an example from current politics, the false belief that the Paris Climate Accord is needed to keep warming below two degrees is like a comforting imaginary blanket of snow upon the social discussion of climate change, a delusional mass fantasy that conveniently removes all need for its sufferers to engage with evidence and logic and reality and facts. Equally, the views of climate denialists that climate change is not due to human emissions, or that massive sudden warming is okay, are similar comforting mass delusions.

In the Paris case, science shows that all commitments will deliver warming of four degrees, barely different from business as usual, and causing massive economic dislocation. The collective hope for a two degree result leads people to claim so many people can’t be wrong and Paris was a great triumph. People then convert a fervent hope into a firm belief, rather like religious faith in Jesus Christ.

Where everyone thinks that the silent secret snow job is a good thing to avoid the trauma of cognitive dissonance, it is very like the emperor’s new clothes in the famous story by Hans Christian Andersen. Any critics are just hounded away using ad hominem fallacious reasoning, to avoid confronting the basic assumption that makes life possible, if only temporarily. It occurs to me with the Emperor’s New Clothes, it would be great to write a sequel in which Macchiavellian plotters use the obvious fact that the king is a loony Lear to depose him.

In the case of climate, the decisive false assumptions are that humans can continue to exist on our planet without major economic change, and that emission reduction could stabilise the climate. With Paul’s secret snow fantasy, he assumes it is possible to sink deeper into the comfort of his personal mental blizzard. Such fantasies are not sustainable. Paul’s blocking reaction to his parents in Silent Snow is a great model for how people suffering from a collective schizoid dislocation find their fantasy preferable to reality.
Last edited by Robert Tulip on Fri Jun 02, 2017 6:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Re: Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken - a discussion

Unread post

Now you've gone overboard, Robert. The analysis fails on the simple factual point that Paul alone, not the rest of the world, is having this fantastical delusion of snow covering the world.
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6499
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2719 times
Been thanked: 2662 times
Contact:
Australia

Re: Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken - a discussion

Unread post

DWill wrote:Paul alone, not the rest of the world, is having this fantastical delusion of snow covering the world.
An individual pathology can provide insight into how a comparable pathology can affect a group. In this case, the sickness is psychological fantasy, presented in a simple imaginative individual model.

Modelling how fantasy can harm a group is a worthy psychological goal, and can start by looking at how fantasy can hypothetically affect an individual. Models are intrinsically simplified descriptions of the actual operation of processes on larger scale in the real world. In the case of Silent Snow, Secret Snow, Paul's stubborn refusal to abandon the security blanket provided by his snow fantasy is an excellent model for broader social processes that exhibit comparable fantastic pathologies.

As Paul Simon put it in his well known song The Boxer, 'a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.' This describes a universal problem in social psychology, well illustrated in this story as a parable of the effects of mental delusion for individual and society.Image
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Re: Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken - a discussion

Unread post

It's clever, Robert, but I'm not buying it as being interpretatively valid for this story.
Post Reply

Return to “Short Story Discussions”