Boy at the Window

The boy and the snowman sit on opposite sides of a window. The boy, for all his worrying over the snowman is still separated from him. And the snowman for all his concern for the boy’s anxieties by the boy’s tender heart is still separated from the boy. The window thus symbolizes the paradoxical separation and intimacy of distance, reflecting the complex dynamic of empathy itself.

Given the poem’s perspective switch in the stanzas, the reader is also positioned at first behind the window and then outside looking in. The window thus allows the reader the opportunity to engage empathetically with both characters as they press against the window with the young boy as he frets over the fate of his snowman; then the reader is with the snowman on the other side of the window hoping somehow to calm the anxieties of the boy. 

Although both characters cry, the poem imbues the snowman’s tears with elevated implications. Even as the small boy weeps (Line 3), those tears are an expression of helplessness. The snowman’s tears, on the other hand, symbolize empathy itself, how a heart moved to care about others dismisses as irrelevant concerns about itself. The snowman cries despite not because of himself.