Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
America (Or What's Left of It)In some senses, America is still America in this version of the future, in all its gun-loving, individualistic glory: "This is America. People do whatever the f*** the...
Genre
In case you hadn't noticed, the world of Snow Crash is not a nice place to live. Racism runs rampant, there are no longer any national laws to prevent killing innocent people in the crossfire of ga...
Writing Style
Neal Stephenson doesn't mess around: He'll pull out all the stylistic stops in his writing and be as offensive as possible in order to get the reader's attention. Example: when Hiro and Vitaly are...
What's Up With the Title?
Pop Quiz: Snow Crash refers to:a) a drugb) a virusc) a religiond) all of the aboveIf you guessed d you're correct. The multiple meanings of the phrase, and their interconnections, are, like, the en...
What's Up With the Epigraph?
snow n…. 2.a. Anything resembling snow. b. The white specks on a television screen resulting from weak reception.crash v….—intr….5. To fail suddenly, as a business or an economy. —The Ame...
What's Up With the Ending?
Stephenson is notoriously bad at endings. People tend to describe them in terms that we're bolding presuming you wouldn't want used to describe anything about you or your work: stunted, abrupt, and...
Tough-o-Meter
You may think you can skim Stephenson's wacky prose and not miss a thing. You may also think that you could climb Mount Everest with only two weeks of mountaineering training under your belt. In bo...