The boarded-up window in Murlock’s cabin is a potent symbol. Its meaning is revealed in the story’s last sentence, when it becomes clear that death entered that window in the form of a panther and took Murlock’s still-living wife. The boarding-up is an attempt to close off the memory of a tragedy too horrible to bear; the window reminds Murlock of his failure and the loss of meaning in his life.

An early example of the “cabin in the woods” motif in American horror stories, Murlock’s cabin holds a terrible secret—it is the site of a tragic and horrifying death. The cabin’s decades-long decrepitude is a testament to the complete loss of hope and purpose within the heart of its widowed owner.

Murlock’s little homestead is carved out of a vast forest some miles from Cleveland, a city growing rapidly early in the 19th century. This wilderness, introduced early in the story, proves to be a potentially dangerous region from which emerge first a near-fatal contagion and then a deadly predator that slays Murlock’s wife. The forest represents the forbidding and lethal wild nature from which humans can never fully protect themselves.