Explication of the meaning of the wind in Jessamyn West's [title story in Love, Death, and the Ladies' Drill Team] clarifies the emotional structure of the story, especially the final paragraph, which reveals Emily Cooper's state of mind and defines the nature of the change that Emily undergoes in the course of the action. As in many Romantic poems wherein the wind is an analogue for subjective changes in the poet from despair to hope, from apathy to renewal, or from imaginative sterility to creative energy …, Miss West's wind is a symbolic device for mirroring and affecting Emily Cooper's feelings. In addition, there appears in the short story the Romantic image of the wind-harp as the figurative mediator between outer motion and inner emotion.

Early in the story, as Emily leans out the window of Burnham Hall observing the effects of the September wind in the street below, she thrusts her hands out "feeling through her outspread fingers the full force and warmth of the blowing—as if I were the one true gauge, she thought, the one responsive and harmonious harp."… This echoes [Percy Bysshe] Shelley's invocation in his "Ode to the West Wind."…

Emily's function as the "one true gauge" of the wind's meaning is revealed in the story's final words as she, "the one responsive and harmonious harp," hears the wind's "own voice, deep and solemn and prophetic."… The description echoes the final lines of Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind":

      Be through my lips to unawakened earth
      The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,
      If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?…

Thus the ode's final lines help define the meaning of the wind's prophecy in the story and, therefore, Emily's state of mind—that is, one of hope and renewed vitality following the despondency stemming from her realization that she (like Shelley in the poem) was in the autumn of her spirit….

The parallel between the ode and the story is further strengthened by the fact that in each the optimistic ending is attained through an observer's comprehension of the cyclical nature of life symbolized by the dual function of the wind—destroyer and preserver (death and love). Like Shelley's "Wild Spirit which art moving everywhere; / Destroyer and preserver" … Miss West's wind "had everything movable in Los Robles moving" … and is described in such a way as to suggest the "destroyer" and "preserver" qualities. For example, mortality is suggested in the wind's revealing that merchants "had bodies."…

The wind's preserver qualities, on the other hand, are suggested primarily in the scene wherein Imola and her Mexican lover, whose affair contains all that the ladies of the Drill Team lack—love, freedom, and passion—are observed from the window: "… the wind plastered the big red flowers as close to her thighs as if they were tattooed there."… The image associates Imola with flowers and thus the wind with love and spring; and later in the story the ladies watch Imola, "the wind outlining her sturdy body—a woman obviously well and happy."…

The association reappears in Emily's recognition scene, which prepares for the optimistic ending of the story shortly after. Only Emily, "the one responsive and harmonious harp," comprehends the impulse of love and freedom which motivates Imola.