Summary and Analysis

"The Gale" is set before Jacob dies. It is told from the narrator's perspective as a boy, so has elements of imagination told at the same time as actual events. In the winter the clutter of discarded things that live in the attics of the city rise up and march on the city. The empty attics open up their roofs to the sky and a great wind takes over the city.

After this creative introduction, we see the narrator being kept in for the day from a storm. Jacob is trapped in the shop, and the narrator's older brother and a servant, Theodore, go out into the storm to bring Jacob food.

Aunt Perasia comes to visit. She is a talkative, energetic women. Together with Adela, Aunt Perasia begins to cook a cockerel she brought, but it is still...