The Sculptor's Funeral

The setting is the place and time in which the story takes place. “The Sculptor’s Funeral” is set in Sand City, a fictional frontier town in Kansas, in the late 19th century. The action takes place within the parlor of Merrick’s childhood home. Willa Cather’s works typically have frontier and domestic settings. In this story, she contrasts the family’s musty parlor with the surrounding environment of the Great Plains, which is threatening in scope and size. The vastness and unpredictability of the frontier discourages individualism and encourages its people to seek the protection and security of a group. This creates a collective identity and expectations of conformity that were impossible for Merrick to meet. The tension between his artistic sensibilities and the town’s pragmatic, normative social structure shapes the conflict of the story. The resentment and the hostility that this conflict creates in the townspeople become apparent in the setting of the Merrick household. The frontier setting shapes the situation, while the domestic setting illustrates the conflict and themes within a more confined and intimate context.