In the short story “In the Fall,” Alistair Macleod’s descriptions of the weather and landscape represent the themes of the story. Macleod focuses a lot on describing how the landscape looks different and how the weather is changing with the seasons. These changes are symbolic of the way the family in the story is changing and, in particular, how the father must learn to cope with change.

For example, consider the way the narrator describes how the ocean looks different in fall than it does in the summer. In the summer it is “crystal blue,” but now it is “hurling up brown dirty balls of scudding foam.” The seaweed, too, is mangled, “ripped and torn from its own lower regions, as if this is the season for self-mutilation.” Macleod even goes as far as personifying the ocean during this season as “roiled and angry, and almost anguished.”

The selective word choice here mirrors the emotions of the father in the story. The father must come to terms with selling his horse to make life easier for his family in the coming winter. This is difficult for him, because he has had the horse for a long time and the pair have a strong emotional bond. Getting rid of the horse makes the father feel like the ocean—angry and anguished. He too feels as though he is forced to mutilate himself because of the changing of the seasons.