Focus on Setting

1. EL121: The Short Story & Essay Writing Focus on Setting

2. UNIT OBJECTIVES The objectives of this unit are to: • Introduce you to the concept of setting in a short story • Describe the different functions of setting • Explore the role of setting in two short stories; (To build a Fire, by Jack London) & (A Sound of Thunder, by Ray Bradbury) • Help you examine how setting contributes to meaning

3. SECTION 1:BACKGROUND INFORMATION

4. The Role of Setting in Fiction • Time: When the story happened • Place: Where the story happened • Character: Who is involved in the story • Lifestyle of Characters: What is the character’s occupation in the story • Moral Environment : What are the circumstances in which a work of literature happens, occurs, or develops Types of Setting • Neutral Setting: The setting is not important, just a place where the action takes place. • Dynamic Setting:  The setting may take on the role of a character. • Spiritual Setting:  The values embodied in the physical setting; there is no easy relationship between physical setting and moral values.

5. How is Setting Created? Setting is created through Language: • Description of the time (when), place (where), and circumstances (how) a story taking place Setting is created through Mood: • Description of the feelings, atmosphere, and environment of the story (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, etc.) Setting is created through Details: • Description of Realistic or Impressionist events or incidents

6. SECTION 2: READ“To Build a Fire” by Jack London

7. Introduction to “To Build a Fire” (1908) Jack London (1817-1916) was an American Writer of Novels and Short Stories. Jack London spent some time in Alaska, a natural and wild region, and very cold in winter. Jack London’s short story was published in Alaska (place) in1908 (time). The story is written in a literary style (genre) called (naturalism). Naturalism does not mean that the story should take place in nature. Naturalism is a literary and philosophical approach that argues that there is a logical or practical explanation for everything. Naturalism is a kind of Realism (genre), which is a literary approach that tries to represent reality or life as it is. Characters are often destined or fated to act a certain way due to (because of ) the qualities they have inherited.

8. Short Summary of “To Build a Fire”, by Jack London A man travels in the Yukon (in Alaska) on an extremely cold morning with a husky wolf dog. The cold does not faze the man, a newcomer to the Yukon, who plans to meet his friends by six o’clock at an old claim. As it grows colder, he realizes his unprotected cheekbones will freeze, but he does not pay it much attention. He walks along a creek trail, mindful of the dangerous, concealed springs; even getting wet feet on such a cold day is extremely dangerous. He stops for lunch and builds a fire. The man continues on and, in a seemingly safe spot, falls through the snow, and wets himself up to his shins. He curses his luck; starting a fire and drying his footgear will delay him at least an hour. His feet and fingers are numb, but he starts the fire. He remembers the old-timer from Sulphur Creek who had warned him that no man should travel in the Klondike alone when the temperature was fifty degrees below zero. The man unties his icy moccasins, but before he can cut the frozen strings on them, clumps of snow from the spruce tree above fall down and snuff out the fire. Though building a fire in the open would have been wiser, it had been easier for the man to take twigs from the spruce tree and drop them directly below on to the fire. Each time he pulled a twig, he had slightly agitated the tree until, at this point, a bough high up had capsized its load of snow. It capsized lower boughs in turn until a small avalanche had blotted out the fire.

9. The man is scared, and sets himself to building a new fire, aware that he is already going to lose a few toes from frostbite. He gathers twigs and grasses. His fingers numb and nearly lifeless, he unsuccessfully attempts to light a match. He grabs all his matches--seventy--and lights them simultaneously, then sets fire to a piece of bark. He starts the fire, but in trying to protect it from pieces of moss, it soon goes out. The man decides to kill the dog and puts his hands inside its warm body to restore his circulation. He calls out to the dog, but something fearful and strange in his voice frightens the dog. The dog finally comes forward and the man grabs it in his arms. However, he cannot kill the dog, since he is unable to pull out his knife or even throttle the animal. He lets it go. The man realizes that frostbite is now a less worrisome prospect than death. He panics and runs along the creek trail, trying to restore circulation, the dog at his heels. However, his endurance gives out, and finally he falls and cannot rise. He fights against the thought of his body freezing, but it is too powerful a vision, and he runs again. He falls again, and makes one last panicked run and falls once more. He decides he should meet death in a more dignified manner. He imagines his friends finding his body tomorrow.

10. The man falls off into a comfortable sleep. The dog does not understand why the man is sitting in the snow like that without making a fire. As the night comes, it comes closer and detects death in the man's scent. It runs away in the direction of the camp, “where were the other food-providers and fire-providers.”

11. SECTION 4: READ “a Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury

12. Introduction to “A Sound of Thunder” (1952) • Ray Bradbury (1920 -) is an American writer of Fantasy and Science Fiction stories. • Ray Bradbury explains “fantasy” as a depiction (representation) of the unreal. • Ray Bradbury explains “science fiction” as a depiction (representation) of the real. • Ray Bradbury’s short story is considered a fantasy, because it involves an unreal event of traveling back in time and changing the past, present, and future. • You have to ask yourself, “How important is setting in unfolding the events and general meaning of this short story?”

13. Short Summary of “A Sound of Thunder” (1952) The story is set in 2055. A hunter simply known as “Eckels” goes on the adventure of a lifetime: travelling back into the past on a prehistoric safari to kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex. As the participants wait to depart, they chat about the recent presidential elections, in which an apparently fascist candidate, Deutscher, has just been defeated by the more moderate Keith, to the relief of many people. After the party arrives in the past, Travis (the hunting guide) and Lesperance (Travis’s assistant) warn Eckels and the two other hunters, Billings and Kramer, about the necessity of minimizing their effect on events when they go back, since tiny alterations to the distant past could snowball into catastrophic changes in history. To keep from having any effect on the past, the hunters must stay on a path to avoid disrupting the environment and only kill animals who were going to naturally die at the same time. Despite his earlier eagerness to begin the hunt, Eckels loses his nerve at the sight of the T Rex. Travis tells him he can’t leave, but Eckels panics and veers off the path. The two guides kill the dinosaur, and shortly afterward, the tree that would have killed the dinosaur in the absence of human intervention falls on the corpse. Travis’ elation quickly changes to fury when they find Eckels and see his muddy boots, which prove he went off the path. Travis threatens to leave Eckels in the past unless Eckels removes the bullets from the dinosaur’s body, as they can’t be left in the past.

14. Continue Short Summary of “A Sound of Thunder” (1952) Upon returning to the present, Eckels notices subtle changes. English words are now spelled strangely, people and buildings are different, and, worst of all, Deutscher has won the election instead of Keith. Looking through the mud on his boots, Eckels finds a crushed butterfly, whose death was apparently the cause of the changes. He pleads to Travis to take him back into the past to undo the damage, but Travis refuses and fires his rifle. It is left untold what he shoots, although it is presumed that he kills Eckels. The dark ending reveals the meaning of the title—the story’s final words are, “There was a sound of thunder.”