Summary
Paul sees that Ellen is walking back and forth with their baby in her arms. Though concern drove him to the house, he doesn’t want her to know of his concern, for fear that she will take it as a sign of capitulation to her request to leave the prairie. After watching her a moment, he goes to his tool shed and spends the afternoon mending harnesses while the wind whines past him.
While he stitches and rivets the harnesses, Paul reconsiders Ellen’s arguments for leaving the farm and he refutes them in his head. Perhaps she was right, and he has ruined the soil; but the rain will come back and he will do better. He will plant clover and alfalfa; he will raise cattle; gradually, the land will return to fertility. He will prove his capability and worth. Though the wind blackened the sky and turned his farm into a wilderness, it is not his master. He will make his farm a home again.
Paul decides to talk to Ellen that night when the wind dies down. He will gratify her by acknowledging her wisdom and taking her advice to plant fibrous crops instead of wheat. He wonders if she will take pride in the land and understand that he is working for her future and their son’s.
At four o’clock, Paul senses the wind slackening. At five, he looks out the door and can see his neighbor’s property half a mile away. Numb with relief, he realizes the wind storm is over. But the relief is short-lived: He looks upon his barren fields, which resemble an ocean full of swells suddenly turned to stone. The sight makes him feel sick and cold. Like the fields, he feels that he too is naked. Everything that allowed him to deny the reality of existence is gone. His vision of the future, his faith in the land and himself—everything has been stripped away, and he can see that Ellen is right: their farm is a desert. He hears her voice repeat “the lamp lit at noon.”
Paul returns to the stable to feed his horses while considering what to say to Ellen. He had been so loyal to the land that it never occurred to him to abandon it; his instinct was to continue to defend it, despite its worthlessness. He hesitates before going in, imagining that she will cry again.
However, Ellen is gone when he reaches the house. The door is open, the lamp has blown out, and the baby’s crib is empty. He tries to call her name but terror clamps his throat shut. He understands that she is not in the house.
Paul runs around the farm, into the pasture, and back to the house to see if she returned. He runs down the road to find help. Some people join the search, but he is the one who finds her nearly two hours later. Crouched against a drift of sand, Ellen lies with the baby clasped tightly in her arms. The baby is cold. Paul wonders if, in her effort to protect him, Ellen held the baby too tight; he wonders if the dust smothered him.
Ellen asks Paul to hold the baby while she fixes her hair, telling him to hold the baby’s face away from the wind. Paul sees her eyes are still wide and immobile, but she smiles. He is unable to speak to her as he fearfully touches their son’s dusty cheeks and eyelids. Ellen accuses him of clumsiness and says she’ll hold the baby because he still doesn’t know how, pointing out how the baby’s head falls forward on Paul’s arm.
Ellen holds the baby while Paul lifts her up and carries her toward home across the fields. The setting sun appears to smolder like a distant fire. Paul stares ahead as he strides, not noticing Ellen’s weight. She smiles and comments on how strong his arms are. He tries to answer but can’t, seemingly quieted by the darkening sky. Ellen whispers to tell him he was right: the storm died down. She says that a red sky means tomorrow will be fine.
Analysis
Paul is relieved to see that Ellen and the baby are okay, though he does not consider how the baby is in her arms, and therefore not protected by the muslin tent of his crib. But this instance of foreshadowing is lost on him as he retreats to his tool shed, and, consequently, his delusions.
As a contrast to the dark and open space of the stable, Paul’s tool shed is confined enough to be lit with a lantern. While the environment of the stable enabled him to consider Ellen’s justifications for leaving, in the tool shed he reasserts to himself his own vision of future prosperity. Just as Ellen’s lamp symbolizes her insight, Paul’s lantern symbolizes his delusion.
Similarly, there is symbolic resonance in Paul’s stitching and riveting: while physically mending harnesses, he is mending the delusion which he had nearly given up, convincing himself that there is still a viable future on the farm.
But Paul’s theoretical mending work proves useless when the wind dies down. With the stark reality of the landscape, his delusion is laid bare; he is no longer able to blind himself to the truth that their farm is a desert. With the return of Ellen’s voice saying “the lamp lit at noon,” Paul finally accepts her insight and understands his own delusion.
Though Paul has an epiphanic awakening to his own foolishness, the story reaches its true climax when Ellen goes missing and Paul discovers her with their baby cold in her arms. Despite being correct in her insight that they needed to leave the farm, Ellen’s insight morphs into delusion as she runs straight into harm as a means of escape. Delusion has taken over: she smiles and keeps her eyes wide, apparently unaware that her baby is dead.
The shock of the situation renders Paul mute. Moving almost automatically, as if experiencing dissociation, Paul carries his wife and child toward home without registering their weight. Ellen smiles and comments on his strength, happy to be vulnerable and reliant on his strength as she earlier desired.
The story ends with a reversal of character traits: the clarity with which he sees things disturbs Paul, while Ellen is at peace in her delusion. Ellen’s dialogue, as the story’s final words, have an ironic resonance: though a red sky at night symbolizes fair weather ahead, the couple have been irrevocably changed by the events, and face only grief and hardship. Any contentment Ellen feels is because her delusion insulates her from the reality of their situation, just as Paul’s protected him from the truth she could see.
