A Death in the Desert explained

A Death in the Desert
Author:	Willa Cather
Country:	United States
Language:	English
Genre:	Short story
Published In:	Scribner's Magazine
Publication Type:	Magazine
Pub Date:	January 1903
Wikisource:	The Troll Garden/"A Death in the Desert"

"A Death in the Desert" is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in The Scribner's in January 1903.^[1]

Plot summary

Everett is on a train from Holdrege, Nebraska to Cheyenne, Wyoming. He is a man that looks like his older prodigy brother Adriance—this similarity haunts him throughout the entire novel and robs him of his own personality. He will always be Adriance's brother.

Characters

• Everett Hilgarde
• Charley Gaylord
• Two girls on the train.
• Adriance Hilgarde
• Katharine Gaylord
• Maggie Gaylord
• The Parson
• Diana, a chaste actress in New York City.

Allusions to other works

• Katharine Gaylord mentions Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold, Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Heinrich Heine's Florentine Nights.

Moreover, Gussie Davis' song "In the Baggage Coach Ahead" is mentioned - albeit 'in' is elided.^[2]

Literary significance and criticism

It has been argued that the title of the story was influenced by Willa Cather's reading of Robert Browning.^[3]

Allusions to Alexandre Dumas, fils' La dame aux camelias and Lucretius's De rerum natura have also been found.^[4]

External links

• Full Text at the Willa Cather Archive

Notes and References

1. Willa Cather's Collected Short Fiction, University of Nebraska Press; Rev Ed edition, 1 Nov 1970, page 217
2. Stouck, David, 'Review of The Troll Garden, by Willa Cather', Great Plains Quarterly, 4:278
3. Bernice Slote, 'Willa Cather and Her First Book', Willa Cather, April Twilights, University of Nebraska Press, 1968, page xi
4. Woodress, James, The Troll Garden by Willa Cather, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983b, p. 126