Style and Technique
Last Updated on May 7, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 158
The story is told in the first person by an unnamed narrator, who probably represents Tolstoy himself. “The Snow-Storm” contains little suspense and almost no adventure. Nothing extraordinary happens—a man gets lost while sleighing in a snowstorm and finds his way to shelter with the help of some mail-express drivers. The main point of interest in the story is the narrator’s psychological contemplation of things around him: his driver, the horses’ behavior, the storm, the night, and himself.
The language of the story is neutral, unmarked, and stylistically classical. The one literary device characteristic to Tolstoy in the story is the narrator’s ability to associate images from the reality around him to his dreams as he alternately dozes and wakes up during the long night of travel.
Although there are no real sociological complications between the nobleman narrator and the serf drivers, there is a hint of distrust between the representatives of two different classes.
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