Gender, Power, and Wisdom Theme Analysis

Moon of the Crusted Snow offers a cautionary tale against toxic masculinity. The story depicts an Anishinaabe community struggling to survive through a harsh winter during a blackout. Some members of the community (notably protagonist Evan Whitesky’s family) respect the wisdom of their eldest community member, a wise old woman named and Aileen Jones. Others defer to a younger, stronger, and more aggressive man named Justin Scott. Scott’s authority relies on his domineering and abusive form of masculinity: he uses his physical strength, aggression, and fear-mongering to get his way. Aileen, in contrast, is physically unassuming: she’s old and frail, and she doesn’t survive the winter. Nonetheless, Aileen’s emphasis on trusting the elders’ wisdom and nurturing the community’s women (who are its spiritual guides and healers) ultimately saves the community. Scott’s followers, on the other hand, eventually clash in a deadly confrontation. The book challenges the traditional idea that the most powerful authority figures are young, strong, aggressive men—the story’s wise women are actually the community’s most powerful assets.

Aileen’s character proves that people are wrong to underestimate the elderly, because their wisdom can guide people through difficult times more effectively than physical strength and aggression can. Although Aileen is physically weak, she has a wealth of experience that’s essential to the community’s survival. Those who listen to her stories take comfort in previous generations’ perseverance through hard times. They also learn “critical” skills about “how the old ones lived on the land,” which gives them the tools they need to survive the winter. In the community’s current circumstances, it’s this wisdom and knowledge that will save them—no amount of physical strength or power will help without Aileen’s clear direction. Scott, on the other hand, believes that ignoring the elders’ advice and intimidating others will protect the community—but his intimidation tactics only cause violent confrontations. When a desperate man named Mark Phillips arrives on the scene, Scott ignores the elders’ advice to avoid a violent confrontation and he shoots Phillips dead immediately. He defends his actions by saying, “We gotta make a stand […] I was protecting us.” Scott’s decision to resort to brute force is catastrophic: although some people defer to Scott’s authority and believe he will protect them, he ends up intimidating and subjugating his followers, leading to a deadly shootout that traumatizes the wider community. This tragic outcome shows that in order to survive challenging circumstances, it’s better to trust in wisdom and lived experience rather than shows of physical strength.

The women in the community, not the men, are the effective leaders, which challenges the traditional idea that power and leadership have to be male-oriented. Aileen encourages the community’s men to nurture their women and trust in their knowledge as care-givers and medicinal healers, believing that their insights will prove essential to the community’s survival. Aileen advises Evan to spend quality time with his partner, Nicole. She tells him to nurture Nicole’s well-being and learn from her, because her medicinal knowledge “will be important if we don’t get any new supplies in from the hospital down south.” Aileen’s advice proves crucial, because Nicole ends up sustaining the survivors and leading them to safety with this knowledge. This implies that communities that respect women’s skills and intelligence only stand to benefit from their contributions. Scott, in contrast, encourages his followers to undermine and intimidate women—and another man named Brad follows Scott’s example. Together, Brad and Scott subjugate Brad’s wife, Meghan, forcing her to hunt for rabbits even though she has no hunting experience. Feeling demoralized and abused, Meghan eventually turns on both of them, shooting Scott in the back and casting Brad out of the community to die in the snow. This suggests that sexism holds communities back and breeds contempt—and that such treatment will inevitably backfire. In the end, the people who embrace Scott’s toxic masculine values—centered on physical aggression and sexism—devolve into violent chaos. In contrast, those who respect women and heed the elderly’s wisdom end up surviving. This suggests that physical strength is a poor marker of a person’s value—it’s much wiser to trust those who know the most, regardless of their age or gender.