Literary Significance and Criticism
The plotline was partly taken from an 1893 short story by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Moreover, it has been noted for its trope of the grotesque, which will reappear in Cather's later novels.
The story may have been inspired by Willa Cather's 1898 visit to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where her brother Douglass at the railroad station. Moreover, Cather's sister has said the story was written with his help.
The trope of the ghost has been deemed Jamesian.
Freymark seems to be a throwback to Yung in A Son of the Celestial, Larry to Reggie in "The Fear That Walks by Noonday". The story has also been compared to My Antonia insofar as both pieces use an outer narrator and they open with a scene on a train.
Read more about this topic: The Affair At Grover Station
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