Themes
What Makes a Father
Although The Snowman is primarily a murder mystery, author Jo Nesbø delves deeply into the emotional lives of the characters, including the killer himself. Very early on, he prioritizes the topic of paternity when Harry is listening to the radio and hears a statistic stating that “between fifteen and twenty percent of all children born have a different father from the one they—and for that matter the postulated fathers—think” (19). As it turns out, the issue of fatherhood is the driving force behind Mathias’s career as the Snowman—he sees himself as avenging these “postulated fathers.” And although Arve Støp is the biological father of three children in the novel, he feels nothing for them. Nesbø uses the characters of Harry and Filip, and their relationships with their sons, Oleg and Jonas, to show the reader that fatherhood is not about biology, but a sustained and intimate connection.
With Harry and Oleg’s relationship, Nesbø shows the reader how a man can be a father, even if not biologically related. Although he has difficulty with personal relationships, Harry takes his connection to Oleg seriously. He struggles to be stable and reliable in nearly every aspect of his own life, but prioritizes his relationship with Oleg; in fact, Harry notes that when Rakel broke up with him, “he didn’t know whose loss had been greater” (36).
