At a glance
Waubgeshig Rice, Anishinaabe writer from Wasauksing First Nation · Moon of the Crusted Snow (ECW Press, 2018) · a novel about a northern Anishinaabe community cut off during a collapse
What this text deals with
Isolation, hunger, violence, and death — including the deliberate withholding of information from a community. Read Our Agreements before we start.
The premise
The power fails in a remote Anishinaabe community in northern Ontario. Then the phones. Then the deliveries. Nobody arrives to explain. Evan Whitesky and the people around him have to decide, without information, how to get through a winter — and then two men arrive from the south.
What to notice
- How ordinary the opening is. Rice spends real time on the everyday — the hunt, the band office, the store — before anything fails. Ask what that buys him later. See Setting as Argument.
- What “apocalypse” means here. More than one character points out that this community has already survived the end of a world. That line is the novel’s argument; find it and mark it.
- Anishinaabemowin in the text. Watch who speaks it, to whom, and what it carries that English does not.
- The Elders. Aileen in particular. What kind of authority is she, and how does the novel distinguish it from the authority of the band council?
- Scott. How he arrives, how he speaks, and how long it takes the community to name what he is.
- Withheld information. The reader knows only what Evan knows. That choice is discussed on Narrative Perspective.
Questions we will argue about
- Is this a post-apocalyptic novel or a novel about survival that happens to be set during a collapse? Does the distinction matter?
- Aileen says the word “apocalypse” does not fit. Who is right — her, or the reader who brought the word with them?
- What does the novel say about who is prepared, and why?
- The ending. Read as hopeful by some readers and as ominous by others — both with evidence. Which passages carry your reading?
The seminars
Your group leads one seminar on this novel — The Seminar — with a question you write, two passages you choose, and a plan for what to do when nobody answers.
Curriculum connection
B1.4
make and explain inferences about texts,
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B1.6
analyse texts in terms of the information, ideas, issues, or themes they explore, examining how various aspects of the texts contribute to the presentation or development of these elements (e.g., explain how figures of speech in a text highlight the theme and help create a mood; determine how the setting in two short stories helps clarify each story’s main theme)
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B1.7
evaluate the effectiveness of texts, including increasingly complex texts, using evidence from the text to support their opinions (e.g., explain why the plot of a novel is believable or not; explain why one online information source is more useful than another; explain some of the ways in which a particular novel engages the reader; explain why the wording of the text in an advertisement succeeds in capturing the attention of its teen audience)
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A1.5
develop and explain interpretations of oral texts, including increasingly complex texts, using evidence from the text and the oral and visual cues used in it to support their interpretations (e.g., explain how the narrator’s tone in the voice-over influenced their interpretation of the visuals in a movie trailer; explain similarities and differences between the deliveries of a monologue in the stage and film productions of a play)
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