Far, far away: The
importance of
setting
 Setting helps define a story’s dimensions
 Setting grounds a story in place
 Setting can be symbolic: reflecting emotions or revealing
subtle aspects of a character’s life.
 A character itself is a product of place (and culture)
Nothing happens nowhere
 Fiction must have an atmosphere because without it,
the characters will be unable to ‘breathe’.
 Part of the atmosphere of a story is its setting, including
the locale, period, weather, and time of day.
 Tone: An attitude taken by the narrative voice that can
be described in terms of a quality eg. Sinister, facetious,
formal, solemn, wry.
Nothing happens nowhere
Nothing happens nowhere
 “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 alone, on horseback,
through a singularly dreary tract of
country; and at length found myself, as
the shakes of the evening drew on,
within view of the melancholy House of
Usher.”
 A sinister atmosphere might be
achieved partly by syntax, rhythm and
word choice.
Nothing happens nowhere
Harmony and Conflict between
character and place
 If the character is
the foreground of
fiction, setting is
the background,
the foreground
may in harmony
or conflict with
the background.
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Singapore
(2014)
Harmony and Conflict between
character and place
 “The Bus to St. James – a Protestant Episcopal School for
boys and girls – started its round at eight o’clock in the
morning, from a corner of Park Avenue in the Sixties. The
earliness of the hour meant that some of the parents
who took their children there were sleepy and still
without coffee, but with a clear sky the light struck the
city at an extreme angle, the air was fresh, and it was an
exceptionally cheerful time of day. It was the hour when
cooks and doormen walk dogs, and when porters scrub
the lobby floor mats with soap and water.” John Cheever “The Bus to
St. James”
 Contentment, regularity and peace are suggested in the passage.
Or there can be inherent conflict between
background and foreground…(pressure
points)
What a character wants.
What can you infer about setting? What sort of
place is this? What are its peculiarities?
What are the social assumptions of the
inhabitants?
Is there conflict between character and setting?
Cross reference
 On names: I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden,
some treasure I’ll come back to dig up, one day…this name has an
aura around it, like an amulet, some charm that’s survived from an
unimaginably distant past.” (Offred reminiscing on the past, p. 84 )
 Serena Joy’s parlour room: “The sitting room is subdued, symmetrical;
it’s one of the shapes money takes when it freezes. Money has trickled
through this room for years and years, as if through an underground
cavern, crusting and hardening like stalactites into these forms.”
(Serena Joy in the Commander’s House, Chapter 14 p. 79)
 A parlour with “spiders and flies” (after a 19th century poem)
World-building
 Pastichized words: Compuphone,
Computalk, Salvagings, Prayvaganzas.
 Division of women into various categories
reflecting their biological and physical
potential and capabilities ie. Wives, Marthas
(Household maids), Econowives, Un-woman,
Aunts.
 “A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as
long as it stays inside the maze.” (chapter
27, 165)
The Wall p. 30, p. 277
The Wall
-
Offred’s first self-appraisal:
-
“What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the
arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary.
Otherwise there are only 2 dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face
squashed against a wall […] Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not
where I want to be (143).