Autumn is essentially an interior monologue—Ross's impressions recorded as they are felt over the course of several days. On occasion Ross seems poised to become too curmudgeonly dear. However, Mojtabai never allows him to become cute; this slightly cantankerous side helps to keep self-pity at bay.

As Ross goes through the motions of the day-to-day, his responses are often conditioned by a survivor's guilt—worry that he will forget what his wife looked like. His recessiveness is challenged: by his doctor in Bangor who tells him he ought to get out more; by a neighborly widow who takes him to bed; and by the appearance of a young drifter who falls asleep in the tree house that Ross built long ago. The presence of the youth revitalizes him in a way that the diversions offered by the forthright widow cannot. Watching the sleeping form on the floor...