Girard is a Ph.D. candidate at Wayne State University who has taught many introduction-to- fiction classes. In the following essay, she examines Bates's descriptions of nature in "The Daffodil Sky," which, she argues, he uses to create a deceptively complex story.

"The Daffodil Sky" appears to be a simple story that is disturbing in its complexity. Bates's style is to present a day in the life of an individual with all of the feelings and nuances that a day can hold. Bates's early works were full of promise, innovation, and ingenuity that marked the modernist movement, but he seldom relied on symbol or metaphor in telling his stories. According to James Gindin, Bates cannot "accurately be called a 'modernist' writer" even though he employed "many of the technical elements . . . that are characteristic of what has come to be defined as 'modernism."' His writing reflects the...