Story Element: Setting

1. Story Element: Setting Essential Questions: 1. What is setting and what impact can it have on a story? 2. What literary devices do readers use to determine setting? 3. To what extent is the historical content necessary to one’s understanding of the story?

2. What kind of stories might grow from these settings?

3. By Walter Van Tilburg Clark • Clark was born in Vermont. He spent the first half of his adulthood in New England. He spent the latter half in the American West as a professor and writer. • His father was the president of the University of Nevada. • He was farming and teaching school in Cazenovia, New York when his first novel was published, The Ox-Bow Incident (1940). Thus he became a national literary figure at thirty. 20th Century Fox released a feature film of The Ox-Bow Incident in 1943, starring Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews. A condensed Armed Services Edition of The City of Trembling Leaves was produced during World War II, when over 123 million books were sent to U. S. troops. • https://knowledgecenter.unr.edu/libraries/support/writers_hof/clark.html (University of Nevada Reno Library The Portable Phonograph

4. Notable Post-Apocalyptic Novels 1954, 1979, and 2006. Link to more novel cover pictures.

5. SAT Preparation. Passages from “The Portable Phonograph”.

6. Response questions to complete in teams. All students answer in their own notes. • Review the first three paragraphs of the story. Create a list of twenty adjectives (descriptive words) from the story that contribute to establishing a hostile, desolate, and unforgiving setting. 2. What is similar about the three ex-professions of the four characters? (complete sentence). Only three are mentioned. 3. What do the phonograph and the music represent to these men? (complete sentence) 4. Explain how the story’s final sentence is loaded with information even though it is rather short in length? What can be inferred? (short paragraph 3-4 sentences)

7. The Portable Phonograph • Point of View: 3rd person omniscient. • Setting: - Post-apocalyptic world. Onset of winter. Rural area? • Sparsely populated • The focus is on the harshness of nature, not the beauty. • Characters: Four men. Doctor Jenkins (host) lives near a stream. Three visitors: older angry man (writer?), young, sick man (musician), other man.

8. The Portable Phonograph • Tone: Hostile, Unforgiving, Desolate. • Symbolism: 1.The pieces of literature and the music represent pre-war civilization. The doctor thinks civilization has diminished beyond recognition, but the music and books represent the refinement and civility of humanity’s previous society. 2.The lead pipe is a weapon. It symbolizes that this is a dog-eat-dog world, one in which those who possess anything of value must be prepared to defend themselves.

9. The Portable Phonograph Types and Uses of Setting (chapter 6) • Nature and the Outdoors: “A sensation of torment, of two-sided, unpredictable nature arose from the stillness of the earth air beneath the violence of the upper air.” p. 251 • Setting and Credibility: “There was the smell and expectation of snow…” p. 251. Readers know this time, a vacant time, motionless, descent into dormancy. “Old and dirty army blankets.” • Setting in the creation of Atmosphere & Mood: “Scars of giant bombs, their rawness already made a little natural by rain, seed, and time.” p. 251 • Cultural & Historical Circumstance Figure Largely in Fiction: Doctor Jenkins says, “Perhaps I was impractical, but for myself, I do not regret…” Clash of cultures; refined, civilized world of learning vs. post-war survivalist world.

10. Type 3 writing • In a well organized paragraph, thoroughly explain how one of the seven literary uses of setting (p.276 textbook) functions in “The Portable Phonograph”. • FCAs 1. embed multiple short passages 5/-1 2. Box three college level word 6/-2 3. Three highlighted literary terms (setting doesn’t count) 6/-2 Length? One page “ish” skipping lines.