As Ulrich wanders from his hunting party at the beginning of the story, the narrative uses auditory imagery to vividly describe the sound of the woods around him:
He strayed away by himself from the watches whom he had placed in ambush on the crest of the hill, and wandered far down the steep slopes amid the wild tangle of undergrowth, peering through the tree-trunks and listening though the whistling and skirting of the wind and the restless beating of the branches for sight or sound of the marauders.
In this quote, most of the sensory language is related to sound. These descriptions of sound—and of movement—clarify how fierce the storm is and imply that the storm is making it more difficult to find the other hunting party in the woods. The storm grows in importance and character through these descriptions because the reader is given more material to imagine how it would look and sound. In this section, the storm is a barrier preventing Ulrich from achieving his goal.
Significantly, this imagery draws immediate attention to the natural world. Because so much of the short story’s plot and message is defined by the unpredictability of the natural world, the storm must be introduced almost as a character would. Its impact on Ulrich’s journey is made clear through image-heavy descriptions. This section of imagery therefore sets up the eventual man vs. nature conflict that determines Ulrich’s fate.
