Snow by Julia Alvareze
“Snow” In Julia Alvarez short story, “Snow”, she shows how Yolanda, a young Latin American immigrant replaces snow, something “irreplaceable and beautiful” with negative visions of war. ... As Yolanda first comes into the fourth grade, she is learning words such as “Laundromat, cornflakes…snow”(87) and through the influences of her surroundings her newly learned words become “nuclear bomb, radioactive fallout…”(87). ... For example, when Yolanda learns about the word snow and the mushroom shaped bomb, she learns it through the definition of Sister Zoe therefore if she sees something similar to what she learned, she is ready to point it out. ... Language, image, and emotional effects are the three techniques used by Julia Alvarez to give readers a better understanding of why she is against war. ... The way Yolanda replaces snow is similar to the way society replaces Yolanda’s simple mind with unconstructive war information.