A man recalls his intimate friendship with his former English professor, who resolved to fuel his unsatisfied desire for playwriting during the time they were apart. In their reunion decades later, instead of the brilliant play he promised, the professor shows his former student a disturbing product of his mental instability.

Fifteen members of the United States Marines tell stories about their time serving in Europe during World War I.

When a night load dispatcher's son commits murder, he must choose whether or not to save his boy from the electric chair - at a terrible cost.

As a bus travels from Ohio to New York, a man entertains himself by conversing with the passengers he calls "hillbillies" riding along.

A preacher is welcomed into a farming couple's cabin and performs an exorcism on their son.

A sixteen-year-old girl in Civil-War-era New Orleans is friends with God, but He leaves her when she is forced to marry a man whom she fears.

Upon hearing news of his wife’s poor state of health after giving birth, a man quickly boards a train home and deludes himself into thinking his wife is well.

A carpenter in the midwest struggles to connect with his son who wants to be a poet.

Excited for their new threshing machine, a group of farmers eagerly begins using it. However, one farmer pushes the machine too far and breaks it, leading to the others plotting to prevent him from using it.

A young woman travels out to rural Nebraska to be a schoolteacher and she becomes mesmerized by the beauty of the landscape. Her connection with the land piques the curiosity of a prudent domestic wife.