93 pages • 3 hours read
Waubgeshig RiceMoon of the Crusted Snow
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Onaabenii Giizis: The Snow-Crust Moon
Onaabenii Giizis, the Ojibwe word for the traditional month corresponding to March, means “snow-crust moon” and is the origin of the title Moon of the Crusted Snow. Traditional Anishinaabe lands ranged from south of the Great Lakes and north into Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba. The Ojibwe tribe, part of the larger Anishinaabe cultural group, and the tribe that Rice’s novel focuses on, was relocated far north to the reservation where the novel takes place. Here, the winters are harsh and long, lasting, according to Rice, for six months. The Snow-Crust Moon represents a time when spring is close at hand but still separated by many weeks of freeze and thaw, creating a “crust” of frozen snow atop the ground. This season represents a time of both hope and treachery, exemplified by stores of winter food running thin and the precarity of walking atop a snow crust that may give way at any point, as demonstrated by Evan’s and Nicole’s dreams.
Nicole’s dream depicts the snow crust as something treacherous, giving the appearance of safety while belying the danger underneath. Nicole recounts it as “the kind of snow that’s hard on top and real powdery underneath”; the crust is unable to support her weight, and she tells Evan, “I was falling deeper and deeper into the snow every time the crust broke. Then I finally fell in over my head. […] I thought I was gonna suffocate” (69). Nicole is rescued by adult versions of Nangohns and Maiingan; her children are able to navigate the precarity of the situation to lead Nicole into the future. Evan’s dream, in contrast, suggests that the appearance of the crusted snow indicates that winter is at its deepest, deadliest point. He finds himself scrambling over the crust as the landscape freezes around him under piling snow. However, the “shelter” he finds is the morgue, foreshadowing the many deaths to come in the community. Both dreams represent the deadly nature of Onaabenii Giizis, a time when much care must be taken for one’s family and community so they do not “sink” or “suffocate.” However, both dreams also recognize that winter does not last forever: If winter is at its peak, that means that spring is closer on the horizon.
The Wendigo
The wendigo is a mythical creature common to many Indigenous cultures, including Native American tribes in the American Northeast and First Nations tribes, such as those of the Anishinaabe cultural group, including the Ojibwe. Born of the (very real) fear of starvation in the hostile winter months, the wendigo is an evil being characterized by its emaciated frame and cannibalistic behavior. The wendigo appears in Evan’s dream toward the end of the winter, as the community’s food resources dwindle and tribe members begin to die off due to the extreme cold, suicides of despair, and a lack of medical resources. While the apparition of the wendigo makes sense in this context, Evan’s dream takes on a literal meaning when it is revealed that Justin Scott, the white man taking refuge in the community, has looted at least one body from the morgue. In the dream, the wendigo manifests as a “tall, gaunt” figure, reeking with “a feral odor, like a rotting heap of moose innards,” sporting “legs [that] appeared disfigured, almost backwards,” and, most importantly, the face of Justin Scott (187).
According to Anishinaabe folklore, a person could become a wendigo either by being possessed by a “manitou” (an evil spirit) invited in by the act of cannibalism or by being cursed by an evil person. Justin Scott, who, according to Meghan Connor, appears to grow larger as the community grows hungrier, is aligned with the former means of “transformation.” Cam, who emerges from the duplexes as though out of a “deep spell,” weeps upon seeing Evan, Isaiah, and Tyler. Cam symbolically emerges from Scott’s spell as well—his influence much like the curse of the wendigo—and experiences remorse and horror at his transgression: participation in the desecration of a body. In this context, the wendigo comes to represent not only literal cannibalism but also the way that the society established by white settler colonialism has historically “consumed” the lives of Indigenous peoples, forcing them from their land and alienating them from their traditional customs and traditions. Scott’s imposition on the tribe—arriving armed, taking advantage of their hospitality, and treating Indigenous women (Jenna Jones) like playthings—is evocative of the early stages of British settler colonialism.
The Tipi
Tipi building is not a traditional part of Anishinaabe culture; the easily portable, tentlike structure was a feature of life for Native Americans of the Great Plains region of North America. However, the tipi is specifically designed to be a versatile and adaptable form of shelter, allowing for a central fire to keep people warm in the winter and plenty of ventilation for the summer. Evan constructs a tipi as part of a secret campsite in the woods as the situation on the reservation deteriorates in late winter. Because of this, Evan’s tipi represents resilience, resourcefulness, and rejection of modern society. The tipi is a symbol of the hope of the revival of the old ways in the face of the failure of the modern world and demonstrates that Evan can provide for and protect his family, even in the harsh winter, without the modern, Western comforts upon which many on the reservation have come to rely. Evan’s wilderness shelter is implied to be the nucleus of a new Anishinaabe settlement, deep in First Nations territory. Evan’s resourcefulness, knowledge of survival skills, and commitment to learning the old ways provide his family a path forward, out of the bleak winter, and into a hopeful new spring for their people.
