The story opens with an incident at a restaurant involving a case of mistaken identity: the narrator confuses a red-headed woman for Nan, the spouse of his friend Robert, both of whom live in New York City.
"[6][7] Critic David L. Ulin emphasizes the revealing, memoir-like elements of the story: "Triumph Over the Grave" occupies the center of The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, and not only because it begins in the exact middle of the book.
Here, and also in the title story, Johnson's narration moves unpredictably (but never haphazardly) between various plotlines that are united not by conventional standards of causation and chronology but by theme and dream logic.
"[10] Critic Gavin Corbett observes that in "Triumph Over the Grave', the narrator traces over a stream of past events, but here he is literally writing his memories out—what we're reading is his testament to these personally significant episodes, all linked by the deaths of friends.
"[12]Social commentator Sandy English remarks upon the same passage: "On one visit [to Miller's ranch], there are buzzards in the sky…We hear the 'demoralized lowing of distant cattle' and the narrator says, 'I saw nothing, really … to suggest that anybody cared what went on here or even knew of the existence of this place.'
"[15] Author David L. Ulin, commenting on the collection that includes "Triumph Over the Grave" writes: The Largesse of the Sea Maiden [is] inspired less by the impending demise of its creator than by the more general condition of mortality the writer and the reader share.