Waugshig Rice's Moon Of The Crusted Snow

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“One for all, All for one”(Dumas). This is a theme that is quite prevalent in many different forms of literature, and Waugbegshig Rice’s novel Moon of the Crusted Snow is no exception. The novel shows how a major event such as an apocalypse can cause strains within a community if they do not try and help each other out. In his novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, author Waugbegshig Rice suggests that as people stop helping each other, the strength of the community begins to collapse through the conflict between Justin Scott’s group and the rest of the reserve, the mood of the people of the residence due to increasing tensions from the stress of the apocalypse, and, the characterization of Evan Whitesky. The conflict between Justin Scott’s group …show more content…

“The crowd rushed into the grocery store, elbowing and shoving others out of the way. It looked like some people were getting cut in the glass because there was blood everywhere all of a sudden. Some of them were getting into fights and punching each other.”(Rice 82). Through this quote, the reader understands that people are refusing to help each other, causing fights from the large amounts of stress that have occurred since the apocalypse. This is making everyone start to put the needs of the one over the needs of the many and how each person is fighting for their preservation rather than banding together. This sort of self-preservation theme from the shock of the sudden apocalypse morphs into the book's second act where it seems like people are simply fighting for themselves and those that they once considered friends are now nothing to them. This eventually led to a total societal collapse where nobody was truly united as one. “I just heard everyone was buying everything down here. I didn’t want to miss out.”(Rice 60). With everyone clearing out the store for their purposes, she joined in as she assumed nobody else would help her in the future. With her assumptions that nobody would want to help her in the future, she put her own needs first rather than trying to give food to someone who may have needed it more. Overall, the fact that people began to see themselves above the whole goes to show human nature when it is in fight or flight and if people do not think it causes the community's strength to

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