This month’s story, ‘The Enchanted Bluff’ by Willa Cather, brings together some reflections on the importance of both history and geography in the lives of fictional characters. As always, you will get the most out of this masterclass if you read the story yourself: writ.rs/willacather.
Since a sense of place is so important to this story, I’d like to start by considering what we learn about the setting and circumstances in the first paragraph. The very first word being ‘we’ tells us we are reading about a group of people. The reference to swimming lets us know they are near water, and the references to supper, and the sun going down, tell us what time of day it is. We also learn that we are in the US, and specifically in Nebraska. That’s quite a lot for a first paragraph, but it is so deftly done that we barely notice.
Description is important in the story; particularly descriptions of geographical featuresto the and Compare the description of the setting sun as a with the description of the rising moon as And note the explanation of the star constellations as being
