First Snow

Fear and impotence are often expressed in projections and acts of violence. People try to compensate for their lack of power and control by projecting and personifying their anger and weaknesses and taking it out on others. They have a need to appear stronger than they are, and the best way of doing this is by making others feel weak.

A condition that provides optimum conditions for these psychological mechanisms is imprisoned. In the short story, First snow, we meet a group of young men in prison for serious first- or second time crime, who are projecting their fear and anger on Maurice. He is different from them by being black, and he's both mentally and physically weak.

The harassment of Maurice is quite innocent in the beginning. The group only plays jokes on Maurice to: "suspend the monotony of their rage" (p.2 line 24), and to feel the relief of laughter. They never touch him, because Greider constantly supervises them.

Their mocking of Maurice gets more mean; the snowing and the coldness fill them with silent desperation, and the change of season reminds them of the fact, that life goes on in the outside world while they're stuck in prison: "Ð'...so when the air got colder, and we knew winter was on its way, a certain desperation latched onto our hearts". (p.2 lines 31-32) Snowing may be a symbol of their suppressed fear and anger, meaning that it is starting to show in connection with their growing desperation and feeling of isolation.

The group hates Maurice for being weak. His weakness reminds them of their own weakness, and weakness they can't afford in prison. He's a picture of their projections. That's why they can't stand him opening his feelings when he tells them about the death of his brother. Firstly, it makes him human, and thereby it's harder to keep a superior distance towards him (p.3 lines 53-55):"Maurice began to moan a little, and then, to our horror, sat up and began to speak to us." And secondly, exposing emotional things is a sign of weakness, a reminder of their human fragility. When Greider gets hit, there is no one there to prevent the group from attacking Maurice. Apart from representing a common authority, he might also symbolize a moral or civilized citizen in the boys, which dies at this point in the story. They beat up Maurice brutally, "with pride, with glory."(p.5 lines 126-127). The reason for this grotesque, demoralizing behavior is suggested in text 3. It says: "Out there, lacking restraints, sanctioned to kill, confronted by a hostile country and a relentless enemy, we sank into a brutish state" (lines 9-11). The text describes how ordinary men with normal moral values, under certain circumstances, discover a capacity for meanness in themselves that they never knew existed. There are certain similarities in the descriptions above and the conditions of imprisonment in First snow. Both the