Plot Summary: “The Wind” by Ray Bradbury was first published in Weird Tales in March 1943 and later included in the collection Dark Carnival (1947). The story revolves around a series of telephone calls between Herb Thompson and his friend Allin, a travel writer who lives alone in an isolated house. Allin is convinced that the wind—a conscious force that has pursued him since an expedition to the Himalayas—has finally returned to capture him. Throughout the night, he describes how this presence surrounds his home, tries to enter, and tears apart parts of the structure. Meanwhile, Herb, caught between disbelief and concern, listens to his friend’s increasingly desperate calls. At last, after losing contact and hearing what seems to be Allin’s laughter outside his own door, Herb opens it… but finds only wind and silence.
Warning
The following summary and analysis is only a semblance and one of the many possible readings of the text. It is not intended to replace the experience of reading the story.
Summary of The Wind by Ray Bradbury
One dark December evening, Herb Thompson receives a phone call from his old friend Allin, whose voice sounds agitated. Allin begs him to come spend the night at his house, but Herb already has plans: his wife has prepared dinner and they are expecting guests. Although Allin tries to downplay it, he mentions that “the wind” has come back. He speaks of subtle drafts that barely move the curtains, yet his tone reveals an urgency that Herb tries to soothe with jokes and calm words.
Allin, a writer and traveler, recounts an experience that marked him during an expedition to the Himalayas, where he claims to have discovered the “Valley of the Winds.” Since then, he has felt pursued by an invisible force that takes shape in storms and hurricanes. Though others mock or dismiss him as exaggerating, Allin is convinced that this presence has a mind of its own—that it has followed him around the world and is now ready to claim him.
During dinner, the telephone rings insistently. At first, Herb ignores it, but eventually he answers. Allin tells him the wind is already there—that he saw it moving down the road, shaking the trees one by one until it reached his door. He managed to close it just in time, but now he’s under siege. He can feel the force surrounding him, stalking him, shifting around the house. He describes it as a mocking, intelligent, patient entity that adjusts its behavior to his movements.
The calls are interrupted, return, and grow increasingly erratic. Allin tells how he has reinforced the doors and windows to resist. Through the receiver, Herb hears strange noises—thuds, breaking glass, the whistling of the wind. Allin insists that what torments him is not mere air but the sum of all the winds of the world: a creature made of death, of voices absorbed in past storms, of energy accumulated through time. An entity that has acquired consciousness.
Pressed by his wife, Herb hangs up. He tries to resume the evening—talks, plays cards with their guests—but cannot focus. His mind keeps drifting back to the phone, which continues to ring. He reflects on the disconnection between human lives: while they share a peaceful night, others—like Allin—might be facing something terrible, utterly alone. Finally, he decides to call back, but the operator tells him that all telephone lines in Allin’s area have gone down.
Fear takes hold of him. He is about to go out and look for his friend when he hears something at the door: laughter, voices. He thinks he recognizes Allin’s. Smiling with relief, he opens—
He perceives only the wind: first as a soft breeze brushing his face, then as a stronger gust that tosses his coat and hair. Again he hears laughter, but cannot identify its source. The wind circles the house, enveloping it, blowing fiercely for a minute before retreating. What remains is a heavy silence, almost reverential, and a sense of loss that is difficult to name. Herb closes the door, pale, motionless, as if a part of him had been taken too.
Thus ends the story.
Characters in The Wind by Ray Bradbury
Allin is the emotional axis of the story. Marked by his experiences as a traveler and writer—especially by an expedition to the Himalayas—he lives convinced that he has been chosen or hunted by an invisible force he calls the wind. Bradbury presents him as someone trapped not only by an external threat but also by an idea that dominates him. Throughout the tale, Allin remains lucid and articulate, though deeply anguished. His telephone narration, coherent and detailed, oscillates between rationality and delirium, generating a constant ambiguity about his mental state. He speaks of reinforced doors, barricaded windows, and defensive strategies like a man preparing for a siege. That mixture of extreme logic and absolute fear makes him a fascinating character: desperate to be understood, yet condemned to endure an experience no one else shares.
Herb Thompson is Allin’s interlocutor and the story’s anchor to everyday reality. He lives with his wife, leads a quiet and orderly life, and represents the rational perspective that tries to comprehend—but also to avoid—the extraordinary. From the beginning, he is willing to listen to his friend, though with a hint of condescension, like someone trying to calm without truly engaging. His evolution through the story is subtle: he moves from indifference to unease, and from there to remorse. When he finally tries to act, it is already too late. His figure embodies the impotence of those who hesitate too long. Herb also mirrors the reader: someone who observes, listens, and reflects—but cannot intervene. And when he finally does, he confronts emptiness.
Herb’s wife plays a secondary but symbolically significant role. The embodiment of practical skepticism, she represents domestic logic that dismisses the extraordinary with impatience or mockery. From her first appearances, she is irritated by Allin’s calls, viewing him as neurotic and disturbing. She insists on maintaining the routine, on preserving the appearance of normalcy. Her attitude not only heightens the tension in the story but forces Herb to navigate between two opposing forces: loyalty to his friend and the pressure of his immediate environment. She cannot perceive the danger, which makes her detached from the tragedy—but also essential to the protagonist’s conflict.
Commentary and Analysis of The Wind by Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury’s The Wind, first published in Weird Tales in 1943, is a brief yet profoundly unsettling narrative that fits within psychological horror tinged with the fantastic. Bradbury does not rely on overtly supernatural figures or explicit horror effects. Instead, he builds a mounting tension out of a seemingly harmless natural phenomenon: the wind. What makes this story disturbing is the gradual transformation of that everyday element into an ominous, invisible, persistent, and—according to its protagonist—conscious presence. Fear here does not materialize in what is seen but rather in what is suggested, breathed, and intuited. That subtle threat, never fully revealed, is what makes the tale so distressing.
The story centers on Allin, a travel writer who lives alone and isolated in a distant house. During the night, he maintains a series of phone conversations with his friend Herb Thompson, to whom he confides that the wind has returned. It is not an ordinary meteorological event but a force that has pursued him for years—ever since he explored a remote Himalayan region known as the “Valley of the Winds.” Since that time, Allin believes he has been followed by storms, typhoons, and hurricanes that do not behave randomly but follow the will of an ancient, merciless intelligence. Now, that force is at the door of his house, trying to enter. As the night unfolds, Allin describes how the wind surrounds his home, strikes doors and windows, shatters glass, slips through cracks, and torments him with what he interprets as a deliberate purpose. He speaks of an entity that has absorbed the voices and minds of millions of storm victims throughout history, gaining consciousness through that accumulation of death. A creature that seeks him out to silence him—because he knows too much.
The story’s structure is carefully designed to intensify tension. Nearly the entire narrative unfolds through telephone dialogue between the two friends. This formal choice not only creates an intimate proximity with the characters but also deepens the sense of distance and helplessness. Herb is far away: he listens but does not see. He cannot verify what is happening. His only connection to the horror that Allin endures is a voice—a fragmented oral account filled with disturbing sounds, interruptions, silences. The telephone thus becomes a symbol of the unreachable: it links the characters but does not truly bring them closer. It is a fragile thread between two separate worlds—not only divided by geography but also by experience. On one side, Herb’s bright, stable, shared home; on the other, Allin’s solitary confinement, surrounded by darkness and an invisible menace.
The story allows two levels of reading. On its literal level, it presents us with a fantastic narrative: the wind, as an elemental and autonomous force, hunts Allin for having entered a forbidden place. In this interpretation, the wind is a living entity that acts with intelligence, that remembers, that punishes. It becomes a symbol of the uncontrollable, of nature when it turns hostile and vengeful. Allin, as an explorer, has dared to cross a boundary he should not have crossed, has seen what should not be seen, and now must pay the price.
However, the story also admits a symbolic or psychological reading. The wind may be understood as a projection of fear, unresolved trauma, or mental decline. Allin has lived through extreme experiences, and perhaps his mind has found in the wind a figure to embody his memories, his loneliness, his guilt. In this sense, the tale delicately explores the thin line between the real and the imagined. Bradbury never provides a definitive answer. The story does not confirm whether Allin’s experience is real or the product of a growing delusion. That ambiguity, sustained carefully to the final paragraph, is one of the story’s greatest achievements. Uncertainty becomes a fundamental part of the reading experience: the reader, like Herb, listens, suspects, doubts—but can never be sure.
Herb Thompson represents the skeptical reader. He is the rational character, the one who tries to explain the inexplicable with practical reasoning. At first, he listens to his friend with patience, even sympathy. Later, he becomes uncomfortable. Eventually, he feels guilty. He tries to carry on with his everyday life—dinner with his wife, guests, card games—but something troubles him. His attention keeps returning to the ringing phone. Though he never sees the danger, he begins to sense its presence. When the calls cease and the telephone lines go down, fear finally reaches him. He decides to go search for his friend, but just then hears laughter outside his door. Convinced that Allin has arrived, he opens—and finds only the wind. The reader never learns what truly happened, but Herb does: his final expression reveals it.
Herb’s wife plays an important role as counterbalance. She embodies the most uncompromising disbelief, the stance of one who outright denies any anomaly. From the start, she shows disdain toward Allin and his obsession with the wind. She insists on maintaining the domestic routine, on extinguishing alarm, on moving forward. Her attitude places Herb between two opposing forces: the rationality of stable life and the anguish of a friend pleading for help. This inner conflict—the tension between everyday duty and loyalty—also forms part of the story’s ethical undercurrent. To what extent must we listen to those who warn us about the improbable?
In terms of style, Bradbury employs a restrained, almost austere language. Terror is not built through spectacular imagery but through suggestion: the sounds of the wind, the broken phrases, the silences. The author masters the art of insinuation. The narrative’s progression relies on the growing repetition of phone calls, the emotional intensity of each new conversation, and the sense that something is approaching but never quite revealing itself. The story advances like a spiral, and the reader, along with the characters, descends into that vortex.
The tone oscillates between the ordinary and the ominous. Bradbury begins with a familiar situation—a phone call, a conversation between friends—and gradually introduces the strange, without the reader ever pinpointing when reality gives way to the fantastic. That gradual transition is characteristic of his work: fear does not break in; it seeps. Thus, The Wind is not merely a story of supernatural horror, but also a study of anguish, isolation, and human disconnection.
Ultimately, the story can be read as a warning about the limits of human knowledge and the fragility of reason. Allin sought to understand nature’s secrets but ended up destroyed by them. The wind, as a symbol, represents all that escapes control: the intangible, the incommunicable, the inexplicable. Bradbury offers no answers. He leaves us, like Herb, standing before an open door and a wind that blows in.
