SETTING

1. SETTING How does it add to the meaning?

2. SETTING • Setting is essential to the understanding of a work of fiction. • Setting reveals atmosphere or mood of the work. • Setting yields clues as to the tone that will eventually emerge. • Many settings function as unrelenting foreshadowing to yet unperceived events.

3. SETTING • Here are some ways setting may function either alone or in conjunction with other functions: • 1. Establish mood and atmosphere • 2. Foreshadow events • 3. Serve as a symbol • 4. Reflect the emotional conditions of characters in the work

4. SETTING • 5. Introduce or enrich the theme of a work • 6. Reveal characters’ attributes • 7. Indicate the time and place • In The Scarlet Letter the somber Puritan mood is suggested by such words and phrases as “sad colored garments,” “gray,” “cemetery,” “prison,” “grave,” “sepulchers,” “Jail,” “gloomy,” and “ugly black flower of civilized society”

5. SETTING • The reader is also made aware of the incongruity of finding in this setting a “wild rose bush” because it is described by such words and phrases as…delicate gems, fragrance, and fragile beauty, but is surrounded by words such as condemned, doom, stern, and sorrow. • These words set the mood of the novel, a tale of narrow-minded persecution, hypocrisy, betrayal, and love.

6. SETTING • The contrast of the dark, confining words with the brighter, more positive words provide a basic foundation for the contrasts in the novel between the Puritans (hypocrites) and Hester (open honesty). • Also, between hidden vs. open sin as it epitomized by the contrast between the forest and the town. • Thus the setting of the novel establishes the mood, aids characterization, and introduces the theme

7. SETTING • Listen to the following from “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe. The opening paragraph conveys an overwhelming atmosphere of impending doom, decay, and disaster; reveals character; and suggests the theme. • Again, how does setting contribute to the meaning of the story?