Key Skills in English B. Setting


1. The Importance of Setting Te setting of a piece of literature is the world of the narrative; a time and place which provide a backdrop to the story. Setting can also include weather, historical period, a social environment and physical details about immediate surroundings. Settings can be realistic or imaginary (e.g. fantasy) or a combination of both real and imaginary elements. Most novels and short stories include more than one setting as the narrative progresses.


Te function of the setting is of great importance in any narrative. • • • • •


It can have a huge effect on plot and characters. It can establish mood or atmosphere. It can add realism to a narrative.


It can be symbolic in nature and related to central themes. It can help the reader to engage imaginatively with the characters and plot.


An author can bring the setting alive by using descriptive details. You need to ask yourself the following questions about setting: • Where is this story taking place? • What is the importance of the setting to the story? • How does the writer use language to create the setting?


It is usually quite easy to establish the time and place of the setting. Sometimes writers give neutral, factual details which convey objective information:


Te town of Ballygarbh has a population of three thousand people. Many of the present inhabitants have lived in the town for most of their lives and can trace their roots back several centuries. Very few outsiders come to live in


Ballygarbh, as it does not have much to offer as regards employment or opportunity. Te old square, where people once congregated on fair days, is now home to a few small shops, a couple of pubs and a small filling station.


However, it can be more challenging to create a setting which contributes to the narrative. When commenting on setting, it is a good idea to ask yourself the following: What can I see, hear, taste, feel, smell? Writers can appeal to the senses to create a vivid sense of reality and invite the reader into the imagined world. Take, for example, the description of Maycomb in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird:


Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then; a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, aſter their three o’ clock


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naps, and by nightfall were like soſt tea-cakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.


People moved slowly then. Tey ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. Tere was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with.


Unit 3: Ficiton


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