Pathetic Fallacy Examples in Short Stories: 6 Skies That Take Sides
Quick answer: Pathetic fallacy examples from Poe, Chekhov, Chopin, Tolstoy, Hawthorne and Joyce, showing how weather and terrain are made to share, or refuse, a character's feeling.
Pathetic fallacy is the attribution of human feeling to the natural world: a storm that rages as the hero rages, a sky that weeps at a funeral. Ruskin coined the term as a criticism and writers have used it as a tool ever since. In short fiction it is the quickest way to set emotional weather, and also the quickest to overdo, which is why the best examples either keep it brief or turn it inside out and let nature stay indifferent.
Six skies that take sides
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe saves its storm for the last night: a whirlwind, low clouds glowing with an unnatural light, and, when Madeline falls on her brother, a blood-red moon showing through the widening crack as the house comes down. The weather is the family's ruin made visible, and Poe is not embarrassed about it.
The Student by Anton Chekhov begins with a cold, wrong wind blowing out of the east on Good Friday, making the student feel that the same wind blew in the time of Ivan the Terrible and that nothing will ever improve. After the widow weeps at his story the wind is still blowing, but he no longer feels it as an enemy. Chekhov changes the man, not the weather.
The Storm by Kate Chopin builds a thunderstorm over a Louisiana house and lets it break exactly as Calixta and Alcee break their marriage vows inside, then clear as they part. The weather supplies the passion the characters do not need to name, and the title makes the equation openly.
Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy sends its merchant and servant into a blizzard that erases the road, spins the sledge, and keeps returning them to the same wormwood stalks. The snow is not angry; it is simply larger than the merchant's plans, and its indifference is what finally breaks his greed open into an act of love.
Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne fills the forest with a wind that tolls like a distant church bell, a roar of voices, and trees that creak as if in agreement with the devil's sermon. The nature of the wood is the nature of the community as Brown now sees it, and after that night every sunny street in Salem is dark to him.
The Dead by James Joyce ends with snow falling over the whole of Ireland, on the plain, on the hills, on the churchyard where Michael Furey lies. The snow does not grieve. It falls equally, and Gabriel's feeling settles into it rather than the other way round, which is why the final paragraph reads as peace rather than pathos.
How to use it in your own story
The device is most useful in small doses at turning points. It is also useful in reverse: weather that refuses to match the feeling can be colder than any storm.
Common mistakes
The most frequent is the thunderclap on cue, weather that changes the instant the plot needs it and announces the writer's hand. A second is the adjective storm, skies described as angry, mournful, brooding and cruel in a single paragraph. A third is the fallacy with no character present to feel it, description of sulking scenery that belongs to nobody.
Where readers meet it today
Modern stories that use the device well, or invert it, include Shirley Jackson's The Lottery on its clear June morning, Ernest Hemingway's Cat in the Rain, Raymond Carver's So Much Water So Close to Home, Alice Munro's Runaway and Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain.
What writers can take from this
- Set the weather before the feeling, not after.
- Physical detail, no emotional adjectives on the sky.
- Invert it once in every story: indifferent weather at the worst moment.
- Change how the character reads the weather, not the weather itself.
- One weather per story; do not let the sky change moods with every scene.
Try it yourself
Write a 600-word story in which a character receives good news during a downpour and bad news on a perfect afternoon. The weather may be described in detail but may never be given a feeling.
Questions
What is an example of pathetic fallacy in a short story?
The final night of Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, where a whirlwind rises, clouds glow with unnatural light and a blood-red moon appears through the crack as the house collapses. The weather enacts the family's ruin.
How do you identify pathetic fallacy?
Look for weather, terrain or objects described with human feelings, or changing in step with a character's emotion. Then check whether the story means it straight, as Poe does, or uses the mismatch, as Chekhov does.
Is pathetic fallacy a mistake?
Ruskin meant it as one, but writers have used it deliberately ever since. It becomes a fault only when the weather changes on cue or when the sky is loaded with more adjectives than the character.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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