Winter City Sleeps Analysis

When the spirit lies dormant, the soul becomes melancholy. The mood is depressed as snowflakes gently float from above landing on a barren tree. These snowflakes eventually fade into the background in Winter City Sleeps. Accompanied by this visual imagery is a “somber piano melody” (de Barros 0:0:01). Feelings of loneliness and sadness are prominent throughout the poem and with the struggle being able to stabilize these emotions during the cold, dark winter months.
In the months before winter, “when the days were longer than the nights”, this person felt happiness and contentment (Matanle qtd. In de Barros 0:1:20). By winter, however, sadness and loneliness replaced happiness and contentment. Snowflakes falling from the sky “stop at
“The silhouettes of angels grows knee deep” references the mounting feelings of hopelessness and the need to be unburdened by this growing sadness (Matanle qtd in de Barros 0:0:36). Angels, perceived as pure, much like the “one snowflake that rolls across the midline” both offer protection in times of sadness (de Barros 0:0:34). The angel and the snowflake both provide hope in the darkest hours of this person’s perceived reality. The illusion of the snowflakes and angels, created by the images in the poem, represents this person’s perceived reality. A drawing of a barren tree with the words “it was all an illusion” appears on a “horizontal line across midscreen” (Matanle qtd in de Barros 0:0:48 and 0:0:38). Often emotions can overtake rational thought which distorts reality. The bark of the tree, as well as the horizontal line, symbolizes this person’s need for stability in reality. The barren tree is much like the silhouette of the “person walking toward the tree” in that both lack stimulation, stability, and hope (de Barros 0:0:55).
The dark, cold winter months have sapped the energy from the person and the tree leaving them both dormant. In the winter, night falls earlier as the summer sun grows