TH E N O RTO N I NTRO DUC TIO N TO

Literature
SHORTER THIRTEENTH EDITION

Kelly J. Mays
U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E VA D A , L A S V E G A S

B
W. W. N O R TO N & CO M PA N Y
N e w Yo r k , L o n d o n
5 SETTING
If plot and action are the way fictional works answer the question What happened?
and characters are the who, setting is the where and when. All action in fiction, as
in the real world, takes place in a context or setting—­a time and place and a social
environment or milieu.

T E M P O R A L A N D PH YS I C A L , G E N E R A L
A N D PA R­T I C­U ­L A R S E T T I N G
The time—­a work’s temporal setting or plot time—­can be roughly the same as that
in which the work was written (its author time); or it can be much later, as in most
science fiction; or much earlier, as in historical fiction. Especially in short sto-
ries, which tend not to cover as much time or space as novels do, time may be very
restricted, involving only a few hours or even minutes. Yet even in short stories,
the action may span years or even de­cades.
Similarly, the place—­a work’s geo­graph­i­cal or physical setting—­might be lim-
ited to a single locale, or it might encompass several disparate ones. Those places
might be common and ordinary, unique and extraordinary, or fantastic and even
impossible according to the laws of our world (as in modern fantasy or magic
realism).
Even when a story’s action takes place in multiple times and places, we still
sometimes refer to its setting (singular). By this, we indicate what we might
call the entire story’s general setting—­the year(s) and the region, country, or
even world in which the story unfolds and which often provides a historical and
cultural context for the action. The general setting of Margaret Mitchell’s his-
torical novel Gone with the Wind (1936), for instance, is the Civil War–­era
South. But this novel, like many, has numerous par ­tic­u­l ar settings; it opens, for
instance, on an April morning on the porch of a north Georgia mansion called
Tara. To fully appreciate the nature and role of setting, we thus need to consider
the specific time of day and year as well as the specific locales in which the
action unfolds.

FUNCTIONS OF SET TING

Some stories merely offer hints about setting; others describe setting in great sen-
sory detail. Especially in the latter case, we might be tempted to skim through
what seems like mere “scenery” or “background information” to find out what
happens next or how things turn out. But in good fiction, setting always functions
as an integral part of the ­whole.

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 SET TING 283

Fiction often relies on setting to establish mood, situation, and character. The
first sentence of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the H ­ ouse of Usher”
(1839), for example, quickly sets the tone:
During the w ­ hole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year,
when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on
­horse­back, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself,
as the shades of the eve­ning drew on, within view of the melancholy ­House of
Usher.
This sentence aims to instill in the reader the same fear, “melancholy,” and “sense of
insufferable gloom” the narrator feels. With it, Poe prepares the reader for the sad
and eerie tale about to unfold. He also generates suspense and certain expectations
about just what might happen, as well as empathy with the narrator-­protagonist.
Here, as in other fiction, specific details prove crucial to setting’s emotional
effect and meaning precisely because, as Poe’s narrator himself observes,
there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus
affecting us [. . .]. It was possible, I reflected, that a​ mere different arrangement of
the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to
modify [. . .] ​its [. . .] ​impression.
In addition to creating such emotional impressions, setting can reveal, even shape
a character’s personality, outlook, and values; it can occasionally be an actor in
the plot; and it often prompts characters’ actions. (Who might you become and
what might you do if you lived in the isolated, gloomy H­ ouse of Usher?) Descrip-
tions of setting may even (as in the first “Example and Exercise” below) suggest a
key conflict or theme. To gloss over descriptions of setting would thus mean not
only missing much of the plea­sure fiction affords but also potentially misreading
its meanings. Setting is one of the many ways we learn about characters and the
chief means by which characters and plots take on a larger historical, social, or even
universal significance.

VAG U E A N D VIVI D S E T T I N GS
Not all stories, of course, rely as heavily on setting as Poe’s does. In some works
and in some subgenres, the general time, place, or both may be so vague as to
seem, at first glance, unimportant. Many folktales and fairy tales take place in
archetypal settings: “A long time ago,” in “the forest” or “a village” or “a cottage,”
“in a land far, far away.” By offering little, if any, specific information about their
settings—­neither locating the “forest” or “village” or faraway land in a place we can
find on a map or a time we can identify on a calendar or clock, nor describing it in
any detail—­these works implicitly urge us to see the conflicts and aspects of human
experience they depict (death, grief, a mother’s relationship to her child, the danger
and incomprehensibility of the unknown) as timeless and universal. ­Here, the very
lack of attention to setting paradoxically turns out to be all-­important.
At the opposite extreme are works and subgenres of fiction in which setting
generates the conflicts, defines the characters, and gives the story purpose and
meaning—­so much so that there would be little, if any, story left if all the details
about setting w­ ere removed or the characters and plot were somehow transported
to a different time, place, and social milieu. Without their settings, what would
remain of historical novels like Gone with the Wind or Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The
284 CH. 5 | SET TING

Scarlet Letter (1850)? An even more extreme example is Italo Calvino’s fantasy
novel Invisible Cities, which consists almost entirely of a series of descriptions of
impossible, yet often hauntingly beautiful places like the following one.

ITALO CALVINO
From Invisible Cities

W hat makes Argia different from other cities is that it has earth instead
of air. The streets are completely filled with dirt, clay packs the rooms to
the ceiling, on every stair another stairway is set in negative, over the roofs of
the ­houses hang layers of rocky terrain like skies with clouds. We do not know
if the inhabitants can move about the city, widening the worm tunnels and the
crevices where roots twist: the dampness destroys people’s bodies and they have
scant strength; everyone is better off remaining still, prone; anyway, it is dark.
From up ­here, nothing of Argia can be seen; some say, “It’s down below
there,” and we can only believe them. The place is deserted. At night, putting
your ear to the ground, you can sometimes hear a door slam.
1972

•  •  •

Most fiction, of course, occupies a middle ground between the extremes of Calvi-
no’s novel or historical fiction (with their highly particularized settings) versus
folklore (with its generic, archetypal setting). Though all fiction may ultimately
deal with some types of people, aspects of human experience, and conflicts that
can crop up in some form or fashion anywhere or any time, much fiction also
draws our attention to the way people, their experience, and their conflicts are
twisted into a par­tic­u­lar “form and fashion” by specific contexts.

Analyzing Descriptions of Setting:

An Example and an Exercise
The novel Gone with the Wind, like the movie, opens on the front porch of
Tara, where a carefree Scarlett ­O’Hara flirts with the Tarleton twins and
studiously ignores the first rumors of war. Then the narrator pulls back to
show us, with great detail, both the time of year and the landscape in which
that porch is situated. After you read the following description, write a para-
graph or two that draws on details from the passage to explain the feelings
and impressions it conjures up, the functions it might serve at the beginning
of the novel, and the way it achieves its effects. How, for example, might this
description foreshadow and even help explain subsequent events? Why ­else
might the novel need all this detail?
Spring had come early that year, with warm quick rains and sudden
frothing of pink peach blossoms and dogwood dappling with white stars
 SET TING 285

the dark river swamp and far-­off hills. Already the plowing was nearly
finished, and the bloody glory of the sunset colored the fresh-­cut fur-
rows of red Georgia clay to even redder hues. The moist hungry earth,
waiting upturned for the cotton seeds, showed pinkish on the sandy
tops of furrows, vermilion and scarlet and maroon where shadows lay
along the sides of the trenches. The whitewashed brick plantation ­house
seemed an island set in a wild red sea, a sea of spiraling, curving, cres-
cent billows petrified suddenly at the moment when the pink-­tipped
waves ­were breaking into surf. For ­here ­were no long, straight furrows,
such as could be seen in the yellow clay fields of the flat middle Georgia
country or in the lush black earth of the coastal plantations. The rolling
foothill country of north Georgia was plowed in a million curves to keep
the rich earth from washing down into the river bottoms.
It was a savagely red land, blood-­colored after rains, brick dust in
droughts, the best cotton land in the world. It was a pleasant land of
white ­houses, peaceful plowed fields and sluggish yellow rivers, but a
land of contrasts, of bright sun glare and densest shade. The plantation
clearings and miles of cotton fields smiled up to a warm sun, placid,
complacent. At their edges ­rose the virgin forests, dark and cool even in
the hottest noons, mysterious, a little sinister, the soughing pines seem
to wait with an age-­old patience, to threaten with soft sighs: “Be care-
ful! Be careful! We had you once. We can take you back again.”

T R A D I T I O N A L E XPEC TAT I O N S O F T I M E A N D PL ACE

The effects and meanings evoked by setting depend on our traditional associa-
tions with, and often unconscious assumptions about, par­tic­u­lar times, places,
and even such factors as weather conditions—­autumn, eve­ning, a deserted coun-
try road, a ­house grand enough to have a name, a sky full of low and lowering
clouds (to refer back to the Poe example).
Traditional associations derive, in part, from literature and myth, and some are
culturally specific. (To someone unfamiliar with the Old Testament, an apple
orchard would simply be an apple orchard, without any suggestion of evil or sin.
Likewise, to someone who knows little about the U.S. Civil War, a big white ­house
in the middle of a cotton field might seem like nothing more than a very beautiful
place full of lucky, wealthy, happy people.) These associations also come from our
learning, our experience, our own specific social and historical context, and even
our primal instincts and physical condition as human beings. Almost all of us are
more vulnerable in the dark and in inclement weather. And people do behave dif-
ferently and expect different things to happen in different times and places—­on
a Saturday versus a Sunday versus a Monday, during spring break versus midse-
mester or mid­week, at a posh beach resort we are just visiting versus the grocery
store in our own neighborhood, and so on.
Often, however, authors draw on such associations precisely in order to reverse
and question them. John Updike has said that he was initially inspired to write
“A & P” because a suburban grocery store seemed just the sort of mundane place no
286 CH. 5 | SET TING

Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara in the opening scene of Gone with the Wind, 1939

reader would expect either heroism or a story to take place. (“Why don’t you ever
read a story set in an A & P?” he reportedly asked his wife.) By reversing expecta-
tions in this way, stories not only deepen their emotional effect but also encourage
us to rethink our assumptions about par­tic­u­lar times and places and the people
who inhabit them.

Connecting Setting, Point of View, and Character:

An Example and an Exercise
For the purpose of analysis, we distinguish setting from other elements such as
character, plot, point of view, and language. Perhaps paradoxically, we need to
do so in order to understand how these elements work together. The following
passage from Alice Randall’s controversial novel The Wind Done Gone
(2002), for example, paints a dramatically different picture of the antebellum
South than do earlier novels and films like Gone with the Wind, in part
because it looks at that time and place from a very different point of view.
 SET TING 287

After you read the passage, write a paragraph or two about how its effect
and meaning are shaped by point of view and figurative language or imag-
ery. What might the passage tell us about Randall’s narrator? How does the
passage encourage us to rethink traditional views of the antebellum South?
Alternatively, compare this passage to the one from Mitchell’s Gone with
the Wind in this chapter’s first “Example and Exercise,” focusing on how each
passage differently depicts the same time and place and how each passage’s
effect and meaning derive from its point of view and from its distinctive use
of somewhat similar language and images.
Mammy worked from ­can’t‑see in the morning to ­can’t‑see at night, in
that great whitewashed wide-­columned ­house surrounded by curvy
furrowed fields. The mud, the dirt, was so red, when you looked at the
cotton blooming in a field it brought to mind a sleeping gown after
childbirth—­all soft white cotton and blood.
If it was mine to be able to paint pictures, if I possessed the gift of
painting, I would paint a cotton gown balled up and thrown into a
corner waiting to be washed, and I would call it “Georgia.”

•  •  •

Setting is key to each of the stories gathered in this chapter. Their settings range
from the Western United States to China; from the early to the late twentieth
century; from tiny towns to crowded, cosmopolitan cities. The stories take place
in just about every season and all kinds of weather, but regardless of the specific
setting each paints a revealing portrait of a time and place. Just as our own memo-
ries of important experiences include complex impressions of when and where
they occurred—­the weather, the shape of the room, the music that was playing,
even the fashions or the events in the news back then—­so stories rely on setting to
evoke emotion and generate meaning.

Questions about Setting

General Setting
• What is the general temporal and geo­graph­i­cal setting of this work of fiction?
How do you know?
• How important does the general setting seem to be? In what ways is it impor-
tant? What about the plot and characters would remain the same if they w ­ ere
transported to a different setting? What ­wouldn’t? For example, how does the
setting
° create or shape conflict?
° affect characters’ personalities, outlooks, and actions?
° shape our impressions of who the characters are and what they represent?
° establish mood?
288 CH. 5 | SET TING

Par­tic­u­lar Settings
• Does all the action occur in one time and place, or in more than one? If the
latter, what are those times and places?
• What patterns do you notice regarding where and when things happen? Which

characters are associated with each setting? How do different char­acters

relate to the same setting? When, how, and why do characters move from one
setting to another? Are there significant deviations from these patterns?
• Are par­ tic­u­lar settings described in detail, or merely sketched? If the former,
what seems significant about the details? How might they establish mood,
reveal character, and affect individual characters and their interactions with
one another?

JAMES JOYCE
(1882–1941)
Araby
In 1902, after graduating from University College,
Dublin, James Joyce left Ireland for Paris, returning a
year later. In October 1904, he eloped with Nora Bar-
nacle and settled in Trieste, where he taught En­glish
for the Berlitz school. Though he lived as an expatriate
for the rest of his life, all of his fiction is set in his
native Dublin. Joyce had more than his share of difficulties with publication and censor-
ship. His short-story collection, Dubliners, completed in 1905, was not published until
1914. His novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, dated “Dublin 1904, Trieste 1914,”
appeared first in America, in 1916. His great novel Ulysses (1921) was banned for a dozen
years in the United States and as long or longer elsewhere. In addition, Joyce published a
play, Exiles (1918); two collections of poetry, Chamber Music (1907) and Pomes Penyeach
(1927); and the monumental, experimental, and puzzling novel Finnegans Wake (1939).

N orth Richmond Street, being blind,1 was a quiet street except at the hour
when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An uninhabited
­house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a
square ground. The other ­houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within
them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.
The former tenant of our ­house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-­room.
Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the
waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. Among
these I found a few paper-­covered books, the pages of which ­were curled and
damp: The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant and The Memoirs

1. That is, a dead-­end street.