The mood of “The Sculptor’s Funeral” is bleak. Not only does the entire story take place over the course of a funeral, but nearly everyone who attends the funeral is deeply unhappy in some way. Steavens is sad that his mentor is dead and appalled by the behavior of Harvey’s Kansan family and community. Mrs. Merrick is simultaneously grieving her son's death and also so furious with her employee Roxy that she beats her in the presence of guests. Mr. Merrick is grieving his son and also terrified of his wife. Jim is devastated that he didn’t escape Sand City like Harvey did and angrily blames the townspeople for holding him back, and the townspeople as a whole publicly criticize and judge Harvey for not being good enough.
While Steavens and Jim have a positive interaction at the funeral—as they are the only two people who earnestly loved and cherished Harvey—even this potential friendship ends up in despair, as seen in the final lines of the story:
Next day Jim Laird was drunk and unable to attend the funeral services. Steavens called twice at his office, but was compelled to start East without seeing him. […] The thing in him that Harvey Merrick had loved must have gone under ground with Harvey Merrick’s coffin; for it never spoke again, and Jim got the cold he died of driving across the Colorado mountains to defend one of Phelps’s sons who had got into trouble out there by cutting government timber.
Here, Cather decides to end the story with the death of one of the only likable characters in the story. Not only does Jim die, but he dies doing what he hates: egally representing a local man who disobeyed the law in order to earn some extra money. This is Cather’s way of communicating that for as much as people want to be free, they are also trapped by their circumstances and the places that they come from, giving the story a very bleak and pessimistic conclusion.
