Snow Crash

YT is the secondary protagonist of Snow Crash. Though she forms a partnership with Hiro to stop Rife, she is defined through her pursuit of individualism. Like Hiro, YT is on a quest to understand herself better. Her pursuit of identity manifests through her choice of names. She refers to herself in the third person and, when asked, provides a series of sarcastic explanations for the true origin of her name. YT may not understand her own identity, so she adopts a pseudonym to protect herself from a dangerous world. She makes herself unknowable and inscrutable, hiding behind a flimsy identity that distances her actual self from the people around her. YT switches between these identities depending on her situation. Before she returns home, for example, she changes her outfit. Her mother knows her very differently from how Uncle Enzo knows her; neither of them knows the true YT, only the version of herself that she allows them to know at any given moment.

YT’s defensive posture concerning her identity is motivated in part by the way the corrosive society sexualizes her. YT is only 15, but she is keenly aware of the male gaze as it passes over her body. Her identity may be inscrutable, but her physical presence in the real world cannot be avoided. She notices men staring at her, and she rejects their sexual advances. YT has internalized the sexualized, problematic nature of society to such an extent that she expects to be sexualized by all the male figures in her life. This expectation is symbolized in her dentata, a cybernetic implant that attacks rapists. Notably, this technology is activated by default and must be consciously deactivated during consensual sex. As such, YT—and by extension, all women—are in a constant state of precarity. In a pessimistic way, YT is surprised when she is not sexualized.

Her sexualization culminates in her brief sexual relationship with Raven. Though she assures herself that she is giving consent to their relationship, she feels powerless during the brief moment of physical intimacy they share. This moment culminates in the dentata poisoning Raven by stabbing him in the penis with a hidden hypodermic needle. The penetrative act of sex is reversed, and YT regains her agency; she knocks Raven—who embodies fierce, unthinking masculinity—unconscious by stabbing him, a symbolic reversal of the sexual act that threatened to victimize her. After her encounter with Raven, YT is empowered. She is a survivor and is able to continue the fight against Rife, even after more powerful men like Enzo or Hiro seem to have withdrawn.

YT is the architect of Rife’s downfall. She is kidnapped by him, but she is saved by her innate kindness. Years before the events of the novel, she saved an injured dog named Fido and nursed it back to health. This dog was eventually turned into a cybernetic security robot called a Rat Thing. When YT is threatened by Rife, Fido overcomes his programming and rushes to save her, killing Rife in the process. YT benefits from the consequences of her earlier actions; her act of kindness is repaid. YT does not defeat Rife with physical strength or anything quite so overtly domineering or masculine. Instead, she triumphs through the empathy that has always been present in her life. Fido’s arrival is a confirmation of this empathy, providing a spectacular demonstration of the power of kindness and humanity in an unkind and inhumane world. Amid corporatization and dehumanization, YT’s empathy makes her stand out. She ends the novel by returning home with her mother, showing her mother her true self for the first time. YT no longer feels the need to change identities. After defeating Rife, she is comfortable with herself for the first time in her life.

Raven is Hiro’s primary antagonist. While Rife is the architect of the plan for social control, Raven is the physical presence in the plot that must be stopped by Hiro. Hiro and Raven share many traits. Not only were their fathers in the same prisoner-of-war camp in Japan, but they identify as ethnic minorities who have a history of persecution in their respective countries of origin. Both men carry weapons as an expression of their cultural heritage: Hiro has the Japanese samurai swords that belonged to his father, and Raven has the harpoon that links him to his Aleut ethnic identity. Despite their similarities, Hiro and Raven react very differently to the marginalization they feel. Hiro is a creative, positive person, so he helps to create the Metaverse, an alternative world where people can escape the drudgery of everyday life. Raven is a nihilistic, destructive person. He swears revenge against America or whatever institutional equivalent he can attack. In this sense, Hiro and Raven are expressions of the novel’s dualism. They are competing, antithetical responses to the same sense of alienation.

Raven’s desire to destroy America is also an expression of the social problem of conspicuous consumption that defines much of Snow Crash. Throughout the novel, people pursue everything to extremes. Hedonistic consumption drives people to attain more wealth so that they can show it off to others, whether in the real world or the Metaverse. Everything is driven by consumption, and people are encouraged to constantly through the ever-present ads that litter every surface. Raven’s attitude to revenge is an extension of this consumption. Just as people are never satisfied with the products that they already have, he is not satisfied with any amount of revenge. Raven kills hundreds of people over the course of the novel, but his desire for vengeance is never satiated. He has no real, tangible objectives beyond the constant violence and murder that he equivocates with vengeance. Raven wants total destruction, and no amount of violence will ever be enough for him.

Despite this ideological commitment to destruction, Raven is a pragmatic person. He sides with the religious Russians and praises their lifestyle because he recognizes an opportunity to get ahead. He works for Rife because he sees Rife as someone who can help him achieve his desire for revenge, even if he shares none of Rife’s goals or ambitions. Raven explains to YT that his pragmatism comes from his Aleut culture. He is riding the waves of opportunity to get where he needs to go, just as his kayak can traverse oceans if he selects the right course. This opportunistic destruction demonstrates Raven’s complete nihilism. He does not believe in anything, and he does not care who he sides with so long as he can get what he wants. Raven is divested of beliefs, morals, ideology, or anything else which might guide him. Instead, he is simply an expression of pure, unadulterated violence.