Structure

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Beginning

The short story “The Werewolf” is structured into two main parts. The exposition consists of a detailed description of the setting. Readers get to know where the action takes place – “a northern country” (l. 1) – and that the people living there have “harsh, brief, poor lives” (ll. 6-7). The beginning also presents some of the shared superstitions of the community, who believe in the Devil (l. 8), witches (l. 21), vampires (l. 19), and clairvoyant children. An important foreshadowing element is the mention of a witch’s third nipple, which becomes a mark of her guilt and leads the community to sentence her to death:

When they discover a witch - some old woman whose cheeses ripen when her neighbours' do not, another old woman whose black cat, oh, sinister! follows her about all the time, they strip the crone, search for her marks, for the supernumerary nipple her familiar sucks. They soon find it. Then they stone her to death. (ll. 21-25)

This explanation…