Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Moon of the Crusted Snow, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Technology, Society, and Survival
Colonialism, Oppression, and Trauma
Selfishness vs. Selflessness
Gender, Power, and Wisdom
Summary
Analysis
Another heavy blizzard blows in. Evan, Isaiah, and Tyler spend all day ploughing the reservation. They pass by the grocery store, which is empty. Evan thinks it’s been closed for over a week, though he’s not sure. He’s struggling to keep track of the days—the lack of routine makes time feel more fluid. The three men stop for a silent smoke break and a swig of rye. Evan says that he hopes there won’t be another blizzard, and Isaiah agrees. Isaiah says that he feels like the world is ending, but Tyler laughs. He thinks that Isaiah is being dramatic and jokes that took a huge meteor crash to get rid of the dinosaurs—this is just a bad winter.
Modern amenities quickly crumble without power, showing how unreliable they really are. This passage subtly hints that, in fact, many presumed benefits of modern technology—like the ability to precisely track the passage of time—aren’t actually that important. Evan adapts easily, and time more fluidly by watching the landscape—the land tells him all he needs to know. Isaiah introduces the idea that the harsh winter feels like the end of the world, which Aileen will later revisit when she suggests that the Anishinaabe people already survived many world-ending crises under colonialist oppression.
Themes
Suddenly, they hear snowmobiles coming from the southeast for the first time in weeks. Two snowmobiles, pulling large sleds, emerge from the woods. Evan feels uneasy. The drivers head toward Evan, Isaiah, and Tyler, who look tense. When the snowmobiles pull up, the men realize that the drivers are Tyler’s younger brother Kevin and Kevin’s best friend Nick Jonas. They both start to sob. Evan’s ears prickle with fear—this doesn’t look good.
The nearest town, Gibson, 300 kilometers to the south, is also completely out of power. Food supplies have dwindled, and people are rioting. Last night, Kevin and Nick stole some sleds, stocked up on any supplies they could find, and headed home to the reservation. Evan tells the boys to park the supplies behind the grocery store, go home to their families, and say nothing about the chaos further south. He doesn’t want people to panic. Tyler and Isaiah quietly agree, explaining that they’re out of power and food here too.
While Anishinaabe people have adapted relatively calmly and quickly to the blackout, Nick and Kevin reveal that Gibson (which was also affected by the blackout) quickly devolved into chaos when people began rioting for food. This suggests that modern society is over-dependent on technology, to the point that people have lost their ability to function without it.
Themes
