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Metaphor
Explanation and Analysis—Snow Dome:
Throughout the novel, Charlie sees his snow dome (what American readers might know as a snow globe) as a metaphor for the stifling effect Corrigan has on its residents. One instance of this motif occurs in Chapter 5, when Jasper talks about religion:
“Somethink else I could never understand,” he says, “is how people, ages ago, could look up at the moon and still reckon the world was flat. Flat, Charlie. See, that’s what I mean by people thinkin they’re the center of things....Everyone was convinced it was orbiting round them, not the other way round. It’s crazy. Like they were living in the middle of one of them snow domes. You know, the ones you’re supposed to shake up.”
Charlie's attention is piqued when Jasper mentions the snow dome because he has already been thinking that Laura's death has shaken up his world, as though he is at the center of a snow dome. Jasper's comparison (technically a simile) helps Charlie build out the metaphor of the snow dome. Charlie realizes that by imagining his world as a shaken up snow dome, he has been doing exactly what Jasper critiques in this speech: he has been placing himself at the center of the whole story.
Jasper does not have the luxury of believing the world revolves around him and his comfort. He has spent his life as an outsider, enduring the abuse and contempt of a majority-White town on account of his mixed-race background and neglectful single father. It is as though the White people of Corrigan believe they live in a bubble where everything is supposed to be picture-perfect and snow-white. They reject the idea that they are anchored to anything outside their insular community. People like Jasper and the Lu family are are targeted because they remind White residents that they are bound to a more complicated world that does not revolve around them. Charlie realizes that by thinking of Laura's death as something that has shaken his snow dome, he has reinforced the imaginary glass walls that White Corrigan residents weaponize against the people they see as threats.
Rather than abandon the metaphor, Charlie begins to think of the snow dome as a threat in itself. No longer does he imagine that his comfortable world has been shaken up. Instead, he begins to see the snow dome as a cage. In Chapter 7, he contemplates Laura's murder and resolves to break out of the snow dome with Jasper:
I know we won’t ever solve this. I guess I always knew. So I’ve got to crack open the snow dome. I’ve got to get out, get brave.
Because of Corrigan's culture of White supremacy, Charlie can only see two options if he stays there. He can tell Eliza what he knows about her sister's death and allow Jasper to become a scapegoat. Alternatively, he can protect Jasper by betraying Eliza. He holds all the power, and yet the scope of his power is limited by the fact that Corrigan will never believe the full truth—that Jasper found Laura's body but did not kill her. Charlie realizes that in order to live according to his own beliefs, he needs to break out of the Corrigan snow dome and into a world with greater capacity for complex narratives.
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