Four Types of Setting Four Types of Setting That You Need to KnowThat You Need to Know

courtesy of courtesy of Discovering LiteratureDiscovering Literature

The Setting as MirrorThe Setting as Mirror

• The setting may mirror a prevailing mood. It may signal or reinforce prevailing emotions. An arid landscape, for instance, may mirror despair or spiritual desolation. Barren hills, scrubby vegetation, and dusty dirt roads may provide a fitting setting for emotionally dried-up characters. However, you cannot always expect a direction connection between the setting and the people who play their roles in it. The setting may be ironic, as when a character feels depressed in a springtime setting. Our sense of irony makes us respond with a grim smile when things do not turn out the way we would like to expect.

The Setting as MoldThe Setting as Mold

• The setting of a story often shapes character. It helps make people what they are. Someone growing up on a farm, with its chores, dependence on rain and sun, and closeness to living things, is likely to have a different outlook, a different definition of life, than someone growing up in a neighbourhood where the only open spaces are parking lots. A story may show its characters as creatures of the setting, reflecting its mood, living out its approved ways of acting and thinking. Characters may find themselves trapped in a spiritual wasteland of suburbia, or in a small decaying town that becomes for them the graveyard of hope. On the other hand, a story may show a character rebelling against a stifling environment, struggling to break free.

The Setting as EscapeThe Setting as Escape

• Escape literature takes us to imaginary settings where we act out daydreams. The story may take us to a mansion in the pre-Civil War South to make us witness scenes of flaming passion. It may take us to ancient Rome to appall us with scenes of treachery and depravity. However, a faraway setting may not really provide an escape; it may be the destination of a journey of discovery. In a strange setting, we may encounter facets of our own personality denied an outlet in our ordinary world.

The Alien SettingThe Alien Setting

• Much modern literature circles back to the loss of roots, the loss of home. You may find yourself in a setting that is inhospitable, like an alien planet. You may identify with the exile, the undesirable, the refugee. In much early-twentieth-century fiction, you encounter the eternal tourist, the expatriate – the person in exile from his or her own country. In the fiction of Franz Kafka, you find yourself in a nightmare setting. As in a bad dream, you may struggle with an environment that defies your best efforts to get control of the situation, to understand what is going on.

Works CitedWorks Cited

Discovering Literature. Ed. Hans P. Guth and Gabriele Rico. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002. Print.