Setting

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Setting

• Setting is the historical time and place and the
  social circumstances that create the world in
  which characters act and make choices.

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Setting can be revealed through the authors use
of details about one or more of the following

• Geographic location
• Cultural backdrop/social context/time period
• Artificial environment
• Props

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In addition to identifying the setting, it is
also necessary to analyze the effect setting may
have on such elements as structure, symbol,
irony, tone, mood, and character.
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Setting As it Creates Mood or Atmosphere

• Through details about the environment, the
  emotional charge of a literary piece is created,
  and that charge prepares the reader for what is
  to come.
• When authors describe light, shadow, colors,
  shapes, smells, and sounds, they are using
  setting to create distinctive moods.
• Examples gloomy, foreboding, suspenseful,
  ominous, dreary, brooding, tragic, hopeless,
  happy, romantic, mysterious.

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In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the
ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry,
bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down
on or to eat it was a hobbit-hole, and that
means comfort. It had a perfectly round door
like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny
yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door
opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel a
very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with
panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted,
provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots
of pegs for hats and coatsthe hobbit was fond of
visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going
fairly but not quite straight into the side of
the hillThe Hill, as all the people for many
miles round called itand many little round doors
opened out of it, first on one side and then on
another. No going upstairs for the hobbit
bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of
these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to
clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the
same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The
best rooms were all on the lefthand side (going
in), for these were the only ones to have
windows, deep-set round windows looking over his
garden, and meadows beyond, sloping down to the
river. The Hobbit
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A writer often uses imagery to create moods or
feelings.

• Cold Fear
• As I came home through Drurys Woods,
• My face stung in the hard sleet.
• The rough ground kept its frozen tracks
• They stumbled my feet.
• The trees shook off the blowing frost.
• The wind found out my coat was thin.
• It tried to tear my clothes away.
• And the cold came in.
• Elizabeth Madox Roberts

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Setting as a Reflection of Character

• When analyzing the correlation between setting
  and character, one should consider the way
  characters respond to their environment and their
  adjustment to any changes in this setting. If an
  author gives details about a characters favorite
  room, workplace, hideaway, or manner of dress,
  the reader may infer certain traits which serve
  to enhance character development.

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What can you infer about the characters of Tony
and Ultima from the authors words about the
setting?

• Ultima came to stay with us the summer I was
  almost seven. When she came the beauty of the
  Ilano unfolded before my eyes, and the gurgling
  waters of the river sang to the hum of the
  turning earth. The magical time of childhood
  stood still, and the pulse of the living earth
  pressed its mystery into my living blood. She
  took my hand, and the silent, magic powers she
  possessed made the beauty from the raw, sun-baked
  Ilano, the green river valley, and the blue bowl
  which was the white suns home. My bare feet
  felt the throbbing earth and my body trembled
  with excitement. Time stood still, and it shared
  with me all that had been, and all that was to
  come
• From Bless Me, Ultima

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Archetypal Settings

• Archetypal settings or setting elements have
  some universal aspect that is associated by most
  people with a particular human experience. For
  example, deserts are associated with spiritual
  quests through which the character is cleansed of
  desire and materialism and in which he or she has
  a divine or prophetic vision. The sea is a
  setting that hints at an opportunity to delve
  into the subconscious. Underground places
  suggest an experience in which the hero confronts
  the darker or more unpleasant aspects of the
  self, including the fear of death. Many other
  archetypal settings enrich the readers
  understanding of the authors chosen theme.
  Other archetypal settings include the river,
  garden, wasteland, maze, castle, tower,
  wilderness, and the threshold.

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Characterization

• Characterization is the process of presenting the
  different aspects of character and personality of
  someone in a novel or short story.

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Readers learn about characters from.

• What they say (dialogue)
• What they do (actions)
• What they think (interior monologue)
• What they have and wear
• Where they are
• The people with whom they associate
• What others say about them
• The authors direct statement

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Connection Narrative Point of View
Characterization

• Narrative point of view and characterization are
  closely connected. The narrator tells the story
  from a certain point of view and, in doing so,
  develops the character of the persons in the
  narrative. The omniscient narrator and the
  limited narrator present information in different
  ways. The omniscient narrator knows all the
  thoughts of all the characters, so he or she may
  choose to describe a character explicitly. The
  limited narrator tells what he or she sees
  without access to the thoughts of any other
  character.

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Types of Characters

• Static Character one that changes little over
  the course of the narrative. This character is
  revealed by the action but is not changed by the
  action.
• Dynamic Character one who changes in response to
  the actions through which he or she passes. One
  of the objectives of the work is to reveal the
  consequences of the action upon him/her.

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Types of Characters (cont.)

• Archetypal Characters those who embody a certain
  kind of universal human experience. These
  characters appear regularly in narratives.
• Examples femme fatale (siren, temptress
  purposefully lures men to disaster through her
  beauty) damsel in distress the mentor the old
  crone, hag, or witch the earth mother the blind
  seer the threshold guardian and the naïve young
  man from the country.

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Point of View

• The author chooses the point of view very
  deliberately for its effect on the meaning of the
  story. An individual tells the story, and this
  person provides the reader with one perspective
  about the events.

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Participant (1st Person) Point of View

• Two Types of 1st Person Narrators
• Major character (the story is told by and is
  chiefly about the narrator)
• Minor character (the narrator tells a story that
  focuses on someone else, but the narrator is
  still a character in the story)
• Special narrators..
• Innocent-eye narrator (child /developmentally
  disabled)
• Different times in a characters life (ex -
  Scout)

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Nonparticipant (3rd Person) Point of View

• Omniscient narrator The author can enter the
  minds of all the characters
• Selective (limited) omniscient narrator The
  author limits his omniscience to the minds of a
  few of the characters or to the mind of a single
  character
• Objective narrator The author does not enter a
  single mind, but instead records what can be seen
  and heard. This type of narrator is like a
  camera or a fly on the wall.

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Plot

• When characters are set in opposition to each
  other in literature, the result is conflict.
  Conflict requires resolution, and the process of
  resolution of conflict is called the plot.

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Development of (most) Plots

• Beginning the onset of conflict between
  important characters
• Middle the development of the conflict and the
  characters themselves
• End The resolution of the conflict
• Plot is more than what happens. One also must
  consider the crucial elements of cause and effect
  that drive the plot.

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Forms of Conflict

• A person in conflict with another person
• A person in conflict with his or her inner self
• A person in conflict with his or her society
• A person in conflict with fate
• A person in conflict with nature

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Archetypal plot structures

• Quest for identity
• Journey in search of knowledge
• Epic journey to find the promised land or to
  build the good city
• Tragic quest the journey to the crossroads
• Quest for vengeance
• Quest to rid the land of danger
• Warriors journey to save his people
• Fools errand
• Search for love (including quest to save the
  princess)
• Quest for the grail

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Narrative Structure Texture

• The framework of the work
• elements of arguments in essays
• plot or storyline in fiction
• The term texture is used to indicate the
  nonstructural elements metaphor, imagery,
  diction, tone, rhyme, meter

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Narrative Pace

• The pace of the literary work should support
  the plot and characters. For example, adventure
  novels will use a brisk, action-packed narrative
  pace, whereas novels of ideas or manners will
  move with a slower narrative pace.

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Theme

• Theme is the central, underlying, and controlling
  ideas of a literary work. It is an abstract
  concept that is a generalization about human
  conduct. Theme may be serious or comic, profound
  or unsurprising.

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Statement of Theme is not

• just a wordit is expressed in one or more
  sentences
• the purpose of the work (i.e. entertainment or
  instruction)
• the conflict (man vs. man)
• usually stated explicitly like the moral of a
  fable or lesson of a parableit is implicit

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To get to the theme, ask the following

• How has the main character changed?
• What lessons has he or she learned?
• What is the central conflict in the work?
• What is the subject of the work?
• What does the author say about the subject?
• Can this idea be supported entirely by evidence
  from the work itself?
• Are all the authors choices of plot, character,
  conflict, and tone controlled by this idea?

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Tone

• Tone is the speaker or authors attitude toward
  the subject, which is revealed by the words he or
  she chooses. To misinterpret tone is to
  misinterpret meaning.

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Tone Changes Meaning.

• A. Youre late!
• B. I know. I couldnt help it.
• A. I understand.
• B. I knew you would.
• A. I have something for you.
• Really? What?
• A. This!

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Shifts in Tone

• Good authors rarely use only one tone.
• Watch for the following clues of tone shift
• Key words (e.g. but, nevertheless, however,
  although)
• Punctuation (dashes, periods, semicolons)
• Stanza and paragraph divisions
• Changes in line and stanza or in sentence length
• Sharp contrasts in diction

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Elements to consider (DIDLS)

• Diction the connotation of the word choice
• Images vivid appeals to understanding through
  the senses
• Details facts that are included or those
  omitted
• Language the overall use of language , such as
  formal, clinical, jargon
• Sentence Structure how structure affects the
  readers attitude

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From The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar
Allan Poe

• During the whole 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 along, 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 UsherI
  reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a
  black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster
  by the dwellingwith vacant and eye-like
  windows.

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From Life in Caves by Frank Folsom

• Perhaps because bats are nocturnal in habit, a
  wealth of thoroughly unreliable legend has grown
  up about them, and men have made of the harmless,
  even beneficial little beasts a means of
  expressing their unreasoned fears. Bats were the
  standard paraphernalia for witches the female
  half of humanity stood in terror that bats would
  become entangled in their hair. Phrases crept
  into the language expressing mans revulsion or
  ignoranceBats in the Belfry, Batty, Blind
  as a Bat.

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From The Pearl by John Steinbeck

• In his chamber the doctor sat up in his high
  bed. He had on his dressing gown of red watered
  silk that had come from Paris, a little tight
  over the chest now if it was buttoned. On his
  lap was a silver tray with a silver chocolate pot
  and a tiny cup of eggshell china, so delicate
  that it looked silly when he lifted it with his
  big hand, lifted it with the tips of thumb and
  forefinger and spread the other three fingers
  wide to get them out of the way. His eyes rested
  in puffy little hammocks of flesh and his mouth
  drooped with discontent. He was growing very
  stout, and his voice was hoarse with the fat that
  pressed on his throat. Beside him on a table was
  a small Oriental gong and a bowl of cigarettes.
  The furnishings of the room were heavy and dark
  and gloomy. The pictures were religious, even
  the large tinted photograph of his dead wife,
  who, if Masses willed and paid for out of her own
  estate could do it, was in Heaven. The doctor
  had once for a short time been a part of the
  great world and his whole subsequent life was
  memory and longing for France.

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Remember

• The work of great writers is often characterized
  by complex attitudes a broad range of tones can
  be discerned by a close reader and there is no
  one, right answer.
• Analysis of tone is important in the search for a
  works theme.