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On December the third, the wind changed overnight, and it was winter.

This first sentence of the story sets the ominous tone and establishes the harsh winter setting. The specificity of the date grounds the reader in time, even though the year is not mentioned. The changing wind alludes to “winds of change,” and creates a sense of foreboding. This tale will not be a happily-ever-after story. Instead, it will be a story of struggle and a fight for survival.

It was bitter cold, and the ground had all the hard, black look of frost. Not white frost, to shine in the morning sun, but the black frost that the east wind brings. The sea, fiercer now with the turning tide, white-capped and steep, broke harshly in the bay. Of the birds there was no sign . . . There was no sound at all but the east wind and the sea.

This quote occurs on the morning of the second day, immediately following Nat’s fight with the birds in the children’s room. Du Maurier’s diction establishes a difficult setting in which Nat and the other characters must fight for their lives. Every descriptor Du Maurier uses to describe the setting carries a negative connotation. Additionally, the absence of birds in the hedges and bushes is ominous. Even on the coldest days of winter, birds that don’t migrate scavenge for seeds. Their absence makes for an eerily quiet landscape. The sound of non-living things, the east wind and the sea, can be heard, emphasizing the harshness of the landscape.

The sky was hard and leaden, and the brown hills that had gleamed in the sun the day before looked dark and bare. The east wind, like a razor, stripped the trees, and the leaves, crackling and dry, shivered and scattered with the wind’s blast. Nat stubbed the earth with his boot. It was frozen hard.

This quote occurs on the morning of the second day and further establishes the bleakness of the setting. Du Maurier’s words are dark, harsh, heavy, and lifeless. It almost sounds as if a once happy and verdant farmland has turned into a cold tundra. Moreover, the weather was fair only yesterday and this sudden wintry change shocks the characters and disrupts their relationship with nature. The simile comparing the wind to a razor adds the elements of pain and danger and implies the east wind brings harm. The severe conditions of the story’s setting provide context for and enhance the terror of the unnatural behavior of the birds.

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