The stories in this collection, set in a fictitious "Eden County," depict the “dispossessed characters" who occupy its social and economic landscape.

Literary critic Greg Johnson writes that the stories “provide a carefully detailed portrait post-Depression rural poor; they investigate women’s experience in a patriarchal mid-twentieth century culture that conformed to long-standing social, religious and family models…”[5] Johnson adds that “By the North Gate investigates virtually all the important themes that characterize her dozens of subsequent books [and] contains several of her finest stories.

[8][9] Margaret Groppi Rozga sums up the characteristics of this volume as follows:“These stories of the 1960s and 1970s remain so close to my heart as to constitute not just a part of my career as a writer but much of my private identity as a person.

The initial stories in By the North Gate portray a series of losses that define the condition of the contemporary world as Oates sees it.

[11]Literary critic Greg Johnson provides this concise statement on the collection’s thematic elements: “One of Oates’s major themes is that writers, intellectuals, record-keepers—all those who attempt to describe and calibrate the contours of experience—are themselves summarily defeated by the swirling chaos of natural and social forces in Eden County.”[12]