Snow Crash

As I read Snow Crash I almost constantly feel uptight, tense, stressed, and overwhelmed. The scenes set early in the story describe Earth as an over-populated, money-hungry, angry, harsh place. It makes me feel those anxious/nervous feelings because the characters, scene, and plot are all extremely intense. Stephenson introduces Hiro as a really aggressive, highly emotional character. Within the first few pages Hiro is dropping F-bombs, driving at extreme speeds, while doing all sorts of crazy maneuvers behind the wheel. Stephenson really attempts to turn up the intensity in the book by the in-your-face writing style he has. Just look at the 2nd page of the book! Stephenson describes his sword carrying pizza man and the world he lives in; “Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a roll model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them.” That’s only the 2nd page and the main character and scene are just being described and I am already tensed up saying “Holy crap, what am I about to read?”
There are a lot of scenes that make me feel tense as I read the story but one in particular is the scene where Hiro is waiting for another pizza box to come to him but the manager is too busy putting out a fire in the kitchen. “It is the kind of fire that just barely puts out enough smoke to detonate the smoke alarms. And he is losing time for this shit. The Deliverator holds the horn button down.” As Hiro waits he gets angrier and more tense and I find myself riding along Hiro’s emotional. I am reading the story saying “JUST GET HIM A F***ING PIZZA ALREADY!”
The scene I find myself empathizing with a character the most is when Hiro crashes his car into the back yard (empty) pool. Neal Stephenson does a great job of emphasizing the importance for Hiro and other pizza Deliverators to make sure that the pizza arrives within the 30 minute span. Look at how Stephenson describes this scene on page 11. “If there was trouble on this road, they’d be babbling about it in Taxilinga, give him some warning, let him take an alternate route so he wouldn’t get
he grips the wheel
stuck in traffic
his eyes get big, he can feel the pressure driving
them back
into his skull
or caught behind a mobile home
his bladder is very full
and deliver the pizza
Oh, God oh, God
late”
Stephenson does an incredible job of emphasizing the worry Hiro is feeling at that moment. Soon after we learn that Hiro attempts to take a shortcut which ends with his car totaled in a stranger’s drained swimming pool . It is easy for me to understand these emotions because I have gone through a very similar thought processes when I attempted to hurry home during a winter snow storm in Wisconsin. The whole time my mind wandered from what is actually going on to the terrifying feeling of the dangers (i.e. being stuck in traffic, or behind slow drivers) that might be still get in my way. As I sped along barely being able to see the road I lost control of my car and drove head-on into the guard rail, spun a complete 360 degrees, crossed two lanes of highway and ended up on the opposite shoulder. I pretty clearly went through the oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, *crash* GOD DAMNIT!!!! mindset that Hiro goes through in this scene. Cheesy enough, I had my own “snow crash.”