The Were-Wolf Dog (The Strategy of the Were-Wolf Dog)
Roughly midway between the publication of A Christmas Carol and How the Grinch Stole Christmas Willa Cather published a tale about yet another notorious enemy to the Christmas. "The Strategy of the Were-Wolf Dog" is said to date back to when Cather and brothers would tell stories to their younger siblings. One cannot but imagine that perhaps the story underwent some revision before Cather transformed into a work of prose, however, because the title character is a very dark creation and the resolution is far from what one would expect in a children’s story.
Paul (Paul's Case)
The title character of what is almost certainly Cather’s most-anthologized and studied story truly lives up to his name. He is a case, all right! And it is his ability to be most mesmerizing and repellent to the reader that has made him one of the all-time memorable characters in 20th century American short fiction history.
Anton Rosicky (Neighbour Rosicky)
This title character is perhaps the only one that comes anywhere near to being as well-known as Paul within Cather's canon of short stories and it is certainty fitting that he be nearly the exact opposite of that deeply disturbed narcissistic suicidal young man. Anton Rosicky is old, generous, simple and proud of it. His literal bad heart is placed in ironic juxtaposition to his metaphorically big heart earning him the kind of love and respect—if not necessarily the intense fascination—that Paul could never know.
Cressida Garnet (The Diamond Mine)
Cressida Garnet is an opera singer and so occupies that roster of characters in Cather’s stories occupied by more sophisticated denizens of the world performing artists who stand in opposition to her simple Midwestern folk. Making Cressida unique among those other artists of her stories is that she and her story were quite blatantly based upon a real life historical analogue: Lillian Nordica. That publishers delayed publication due to fears of a lawsuit reveal just how closely the fictional and real worlds collide: Nordica eventually succumbed to the effects of hypothermia that resulted from a shipwreck off the coast of Australia while Cressida Garnet’s comes to its tragic end as a passenger aboard the Titanic.
Canute Canuteson (On the Divide)
Sharing little with Paul, Anton or Cressida, Canute Canueteson is a Swedish immigrant to Nebraska who consumes massive amounts of liquor, lives an isolated and lonely life in a shanty and is a morose figure inspiring mystery and terror in his neighbors. Falling for a girl named Lena, his reaction to her father’s rejection of his offer of marriage turns the story in a rather dark version of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers rewritten as a chamber drama for two with an unexpected twist at the end.
