Summary
Ellen asks Paul to consider how the prairie has become as dry as a desert, too barren to feed his animals. He says that the farm, even as a desert, is better than the alternative: performing lowly errands at Ellen’s father’s store. He insists the land will become fertile again and that he will be able to grow good wheat. Regardless, it is beneath his dignity to live off her family’s charity; he belongs on the farm.
Mockingly, Ellen points out how the independence he has now is in fact reliant upon borrowed money, government-supplied seeds, and unpaid doctors' and grocery bills. Paul insists that it will be worth waiting for good crops to return. Ellen asks him to consider her and the baby, and how it isn’t fair to subject them to suffering while they wait for a return on the land. She says there is no future for the baby on the farm, but Paul says it’s better than growing up poor in town. Again he accuses her of wanting to return to town for her own sake; so she can work less and have better clothes. Ellen capitulates by saying she’s still young and likes pretty things. After a silence, Ellen tells him to eat before his food gets cold—she has nothing more to say.
Paul finds her reproachful silence more unbearable than her anger. He attempts to justify himself by reminding her she married a poor farmer, and that farming isn’t easy. Ellen says she wouldn’t mind having to live cheaply and with difficulty if there were a future to look forward to, but it feels hopeless to watch the land literally blow away. Paul says the dry years won’t last forever, and Ellen cries out in exasperation: she tells him the dry years aren’t the problem, it’s that the soil itself has been so over-plowed that it has lost all the roots and fibers that ought to hold it down. She says the soil will drift until they are left with nothing but bare clay. She accuses Paul and other greedy farmers of sacrificing better soil management in order to have a yearly wheat crop.
Ellen knows this because she taught school before marrying. Paul notices that lately her anger has contained a condescending disdain for farmers. He stares at the yellow lamp flame in response. Ellen, aware she hurt him with her chastisement, says she wants to help him, and that’s why she won’t let him waste his life. She reminds him he is only thirty—they owe it to themselves to make their lives better.
He continues to stare at the lamp in silence, which she takes as indifference, spurring her to anger again. She says she wasn’t brought up to live such a meager lifestyle. Paul tells her she’s a farmer’s wife now, and that he’s doing his best to keep her clothed and fed; it’s not his fault the land has been dry for the past five years. She laughs shrilly as she mocks the idea that salty pork, potatoes, and eggs is enough to eat. She shows him her worn-out slipper and Paul shows her his desiccated cowhide boots. He stands, ashamed that he tried to prove his own hardship, and reaches for his smock.
Ellen presses close to him and pleads with him to stay inside: she worries when left alone. But he doesn’t want to keep arguing. She begs him to stay, her eyes distended and glazed. The intensity of her eyes frightens him, he stays a moment longer to tell her she has it better off in the house, as opposed to being out fighting and swallowing the dust storm. Ellen says she wishes she was out in it, where she could break free and run away. Inside she is caged and can’t relax; her throat is so tight it aches. Paul jerks his smock free from her hand and tells her they’ll only argue if he stays inside. He tells her to wait until tomorrow: they can talk when the wind dies down.
The narrative point-of-view moves with Paul as he fights the wind on his way to the stable. In the calm stable surrounded by the moaning wind, he feels he has been released from a harsh but familiar world into a world of peace and darkness. Ellen and the wheat now seem remote and unimportant, and his despair recedes. Bess, one of his horses, whinnies; he pets her and she nuzzles him. The wind creaks the stable walls; Paul perceives that his animals are being quiet because they are also listening to the wind.
Paul runs his hand over Prince, a twenty-year-old gelding, and feels shame at how the horse’s bones protrude. Paul fears Ellen is right, and that, despite his nine years as a farmer, he can’t even feed his horses. He thinks of the future he had planned, which is so vivid in his mind that he can endure the difficulties of the present. A new house, land, education—whatever his son might want. But if Ellen is right, then perhaps he is blindly and foolishly trampling their lives.
He understands that Ellen has no faith in the future he looks forward to. Suddenly, he pictures her face illuminated before him in the dark stable. He combs his horses but sees only her face, staring and suffering. He perceives the crying sound of the wind in the stable loft as a woman’s cry. He remembers what she said about being caged, and pictures her running into the wind. Driven by anxiety, he goes to the house.
Analysis
Stubborn in his delusion, Paul refuses to acknowledge Ellen’s prediction that the farm will be too barren to even feed his animals. Paul’s pride and masculine sense of identity lead him to favor being the proprietor of a failing farm over the ignominy of being a lowly employee of his wife’s father.
Ellens points out his hypocrisy by reminding Paul that he keeps the farm afloat by relying on government handouts and debt. The couple’s pattern of tit-for-tat recriminations leads Paul to accuse her of selfishly and vainly wanting to live in town not for their son’s sake but so she can pursue the privileged lifestyle she grew up in. Ellen reluctantly acknowledges the accuracy of his accusation, but the truth of her self-interest doesn’t negate her overall argument. In this moment, it is clear that Ellen’s insight involves its own delusions.
After a moment of calm, Ellen brings attention to the flimsiness of Paul’s claim that the dry years will end. Citing her education as a schoolteacher, she explains that the weather is not to blame so much as her husband’s incompetent soil management.
Paul is wounded by her apparent disdain for farmers like himself, but he stares into the lamp, suggesting that he is seeing her insights as valid. However, she mistakes his reticence as aloof indifference and launches into another justification for why they should leave. The conversation quickly degrades and Paul decides to go outside. Ellen pleads with him to stay. In another key moment of foreshadowing, Ellen says that she wishes she could break free from the cage that the house has become and run away, but Paul cannot understand the significance of her words.
Paul is oblivious to his wife’s distressed state, or is at least dismissive enough that he is comfortable leaving her alone even when she asks him not to. By having the point of view follow Paul outside, the author creates dramatic tension by having the reader wonder what Ellen will do when alone.
In the stable, the sense of calm Paul receives from tending his animals gives some justification to his stubborn attachment to the land. Ironically, he is far more affectionate with his horses than he is with his wife. However, when Paul is not locked in the dynamic of an argument, Ellen’s words sink into him, and he considers her insight. The motif of crying recurs with the sound of the wind, which Paul perceives as a woman’s cry. He suddenly seems to understand the despair and desperation that Ellen was trying to communicate to him.
