Out of this, Ed saw a possible mythological origin of his name -- Snaw Dun (Snowden). He could see himself as a slayer of tyrants. But also, he writes,
I remember the feeling of encountering my last name in this context-it was thrilling-and the archaic spelling gave me my first sense that the world was older than I was, even older than my parents were.
This attraction to the archaic later accounts for his love of Joseph Campbell and Star Wars (at least, that's what Oliver Stone claims in his "creative" biopic Snowden, along with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged -- presumably, before he Broke Good).
When he tells us about his parents, there's a tight didactic angle to the telling. We learn that his father, a Coast Guard petty officer, was interested in technology and some of the first video games, and that he was good at taking things apart and fixing them, especially electronics. This knack would later serve him well as a "systems engineer" (it was an MCSE for f*ck's sake -- even I had one of those, along with a CCNA: we all seemed to in the bubble days of fin de sià ¨cle). And the games contained hidden lessons. Duck Hunt taught him that "even if someone laughs at your failures, it doesn't mean you get to shoot them in the face." How loquacious.
There's even a lesson in his description of how the Super Mario Bros. game works, with forward-only action, no going back allowed, like life. Ed writes,
Life only scrolls in one direction, which is the direction of time, and no matter how far we might manage to go, that invisible wall will always be just behind us, cutting us off from the past, compelling us on into the unknown future.
Although he could be addressing Trump's MAGA rough sentimentality, or the notion that America needs to be an empire, his message here seems to be somewhat cryptic for the 10-14 age reading level.
Similarly, Snowden emphasizes his mom's moral and practical teachings. She's not just in the book to be a pretty lip-sticked mom, who cooks and sews, but has a narrative function in his memoir. If his father is seen as a hands-on technologist to emulate, then his mom, a retirement benefits officer for the NSA, is quiet, nurturing and full of incidental lessons and observations about life. For instance, at a retail store, she tells him about the 3% sales tax and its avowed purpose:
"You like roads, buddy? You like bridges?" she said. "The government uses that money to fix them. They use that money to fill the library with books."
Some time later, I was afraid that my budding math skills had failed me, when my mental totals didn't match those on the cash register's display. But once again, my mother explained, "They raised the sales tax. Now you have to add four percent."
"So now the library will get even more books?" I asked.
"Let's hope," my mother said.
The young reader presumably catches that edge of cynicism in the mom's tone and gains a valuable insight into the difference between what the Bastards pledge and what they actually do if you don't keep them honest. Ed never forgot, and filed the memory in his permanent anecdote folder.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
