Who has seen the Wind: Setting - Peacefulness Through Words
             The poplars along the road shook light from their leaves. A tin can rolled in the street; a newspaper plastered itself against the base of a telephone pole; loose dust lifted...a dust-devil...went whirling out to the prairie. In the summer sky...a lonely goshawk hung. It drifted low in lazing circles. Shadows lengthen...A lone farmhouse window briefly blazes...a man walks homeward from the fields. The horses' heads move gently up and down; their hoofs drop tired sound; the jingle of the traces swinging at their sides is clear against the evening hush. (58,59)
             This is the scene at the end of part 1. It is a reprise of the description of the prairie at the beginning of the novel, which describes the prairie as having the "skeleton requirements simply, of land and sky." This scene of the prairie in the evening, gradually becoming night, is quiet, slow and peaceful. The environment is very barren. The only person is a farmer, slowly coming in from the field after completing his day's work. This nightly routine demonstrates the simplicity of farming life.
             This passage is particularly effective in its ability to create a certain mood, and to create vivid images in the reader's mind. By reading this, one gets a sense of solitude, calmness, tiredness, clarity, stillness and completion.
             There is a lot of effort put into the description of this setting that creates this mood. Mitchell mentions everything that is happening. The imagery is very familiar and easy to imagine. The sound of a tin can rolling and the picture of a newspaper plastered on a pole are common things associated with desolate, empty environments, and so this creates a mood of solitude.
             When the leaves on the trees can be heard blowing in the wind, and the bells on the horses can be heard shaking, it shows it is quiet and creates a mood of peacefulness. The words,
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