Nighttime

The poem takes place primarily at night "beneath the uncountable stars" as the speaker tells the beloved a story (1). The dreamlike quality expressed through lyrical images affords the poem a fluidity in terms of the normal rules of space and time. For example, the speaker brings details from the embedded narrative into the poem's present by saying that the raspberries the boy picks are the same berries sitting in a bowl in the fridge.

Natural Setting

The poem's embedded narrative takes place in what could be a rural or semi-rural neighborhood. The characters in the story are children who roam through thickets, pick berries, and climb trees, as well as a dog who is chained in a yard. This nature assists the nightmarish vision that the young boy experiences when he sees the old dog Max as a wolf. Nature is capable of both spawning terror and offering...