Short Stories Essay

Canadian weathers and landscape are not like any other, and this is reflected people. The short stories, “Cornet at Night” by Sinclair Ross and “The Boat” by Alistair MacLeod, the settings are a good example. The characters in these stories all have emotional connection to their environment; they all depend on the weather to provide for their family. Sometimes ones characteristics change when their environment changes. The characters have a dependency on the environment which reflects in their actions and feelings.
The fathers in these stories know that they cannot wait for a nicer day to go out and get work done. They are also so have great knowledge of the environment they work in. In “Cornet at Night” the father has the strong will to work and know he has to get started right away. “”Can’t help it – I’ve got to cut,” my father said at breakfast. “No use talking there’s a wind again and it’s shelling fast.””(Ross 219) The father knows that it has to be done then and that he would fall behind in his work. In “The Boat” the father knows the sea and his equipment better than anyone. He is the most skilled. “In the weeks that fallowed he got up rather miraculously, and the gear was ready and the Jenny Lynn was freshly painted by the last two weeks or April when the ice began to break up...” (MacLeod 272) Not much work was getting done before when he wasn’t working, but as soon as he got out and started working everything was done that would have taken the uncle and the son months to finished. These men have a great knowledge of the environments and timing.
Sometime characters change when their environments change. The boy in “Cornet at Night” went from farm to town and he notices a difference in himself. “But in town is different there are eyes here, critical, that pierce with a single glance the bubble of his self-importance, and leave him dwindled smaller even than normal.” (Ross 223) He changed the way he presented himself and the way he felt about himself....