Cather’s writing style in “The Sculptor’s Funeral” combines simple descriptions with evocative imagery and figurative language. Take the following passage, for example, from the opening of the story:
The snow had fallen thick over everything; in the pale starlight the line of bluffs across the wide, white meadows south of the town made soft, smoke-coloured curves against the clear sky. The men on the siding stood first on one foot and then on the other, their hands thrust deep into their trousers pockets, their overcoats open, their shoulders screwed up with the cold; and they glanced from time to time toward the southeast, where the railroad track wound along the river shore.
Cather pays close attention to realistically capturing the midwestern prairie throughout the story, and this passage is no exception. Here, she uses imagery to help readers picture the landscape, describing how, “in the pale starlight,” the “white meadows south of the town made soft, smoke-coloured curves against the clear sky.” Though this is not an overt example of alliteration, Cather does repeat “s” and “c” sounds in order to add a poetic quality to this first sentence of the passage.
The style of the passage then shifts as Cather directs her gaze from the expansive starlight landscape to the cold, stagnant men. The alliterative quality disappears as Cather describes the men in much less poetic language, simply describing how they “stood first on one foot and then on the other,” and how “they glanced from time to time toward the southeast.” She intentionally uses a more mundane writing style to capture the mundane quality of these Kansan people’s lives. She clearly does not see them as noteworthy individuals but as a group of people trapped in their cold and desolate circumstances. (This is juxtaposed later in the story with Harvey, who is an artist able to escape Kansas.)
