Eng 125

Literature and Setting
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ENG 125
Michelle Pinkard
August 23, 2010 Literature and Setting A dimly lit porch, a sunny day at the beach, hot summer day in Arizona, all of these are examples of places where a story might take place. These stories are known as literature. Literature cannot be simply defined because it is an art form. This art form portrays many emotions, historical moments in time, places and much more. Literature is all around us and is something that we as a society need in order to relate to what is going on around us, emotionally inside of us and to further understand history. Authors create literature keeping in mind various forms in which they can develop and explain their characters and stories. “Shiloh,” “Araby,” “A Worn Path,” and “A Rose for Emily” are all literary works of art that portray the literary element of setting. Many have tried to define what "literature" is or what makes something "literary;" no one has successfully defined literature in such a way that it accounts for the complexities of language and the wide variety of written texts. Some define literature as writing which is "imaginative" or fictive, as opposed to factual, true, or historical. As some argue, literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language. "Literature" and the "literary" then are highly subjective categories. We can 't decide whether or not something is "literature" or "literary" simply by looking at its form or language (Laga, 1999). There are many forms that literature comes in, including fiction, poetry and drama. Fiction is an imagined story, whether in prose, poetry, or drama. Characters like Robert Browning 's Duke and Duchess from his poem "My Last Duchess" are fictional, though they may be based on actual historical individuals. And, of course, characters in stories and novels are fictional, though they, too, may be based, in some way, on real people. The important thing to remember is that writers embellish and embroider and alter actual life when they use real life as the basis for their work. They fictionalize facts and deviate from real-life situations as they "make things up" (DiYanni, 2007, P G-4). Poetry can be classified as narrative or lyric. Narrative poems stress story and action; lyric poems stress emotion and song (DiYanni, 2007, p. 775). Drama, unlike other literary genres, is a staged art (DiYanni, 2007, p. 1247). Through out literature there are many elements that take part in creating and developing each story; setting is one of these elements. Writers tend to describe the world they know: its sights and sounds, its colors, textures and accents. Stories come to life in a place rooted in the soil of a writer’s memories. The place or location of a story’s action along with the time in which it occurs is its setting (DiYanni, 2007, p 66). Through the use of setting, the author gives the reader a description of the world they are writing about. The reader can easily be transferred into the setting by the author’s description of the character’s world. The more descriptive the author is the easier it is for the reader to be transferred to this place. Functioning as more than a simple backdrop for action, it provides a historical and cultural context that enhances our understanding of the characters. Writers know that they must root stories in a reality their readers can experience imaginatively (DiYanni, 2007, p. 66). “Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the “conductor of all the currents of emotion and makes and keeps the characters real; it animates them, so much so that “every story would be another story, and recognizable as art, if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else,”” (DiYanni, 2007, p. 67). Setting within a story such as “Shiloh” by Bobbie Ann Mason gives the reader a deeper look into the characters. “Shiloh” begins with Leroy Moffit, a recently disabled truck driver, watching his wife, Norma Jean, lift weights. The reader learns of how Leroy now spends his time with craft kits, staying at home and smoking drugs. Norma Jean works at a cosmetic counter at a local drug store. She spends her time at home weight lifting in various forms, and eventually begins to take an adult education class. Leroy believes that now since he is at home and has time, he will be able to spend time nurturing his relationship with his wife. Leroy is looking forward to settling down with his wife and spending time with her, but it is at a time when she has found it much easier to live without his presence. His marriage is falling apart and, he doesn 't see it. Norma Jean’s mother, Mabel, is the third character introduced into the story. Mabel reapetedly tells Leroy and Norma Jean about her honeymoon with her late husband at Shiloh, a Civil War battlefield. She encourages Leroy and Norma Jean throughout the story to take a trip to see it and hopefully it will solve their problems. Eventually, upon the discovery that there is a log cabin at Shiloh, Leroy decides to take Norma Jean there. Once they arrive at the battlefield they are both unimpressed with the place and eventually decide to have a picnic lunch at a local cemetery. Norma Jean then reveals to Leroy that she wants to leave him and, Leroy has a hard time realizing that his marriage is falling apart. At the very end of the story Norma Jean is walking away from him down a "serpentine brick path." Leroy tries to follow, but his leg hurts him. Norma Jean turns back to him and waves her arms from where she stands on a bluff overlooking the Tennessee River. Leroy cannot understand what her wave means (DiYanni, 2007, p. 67-76). Although setting is not the main element used to create this story, it has a significant part in the development of the characters and the story. The setting in which “Shiloh” takes place is in Kentucky. The reader is given the description of Leroy, a disabled truck driver, being at home with his wife. The setting is important in this short story because it gives the reader an understanding of the knowledge and values that the characters have. If the story had took place somewhere else, such as in Seattle, the characters would act and think differently than those in the story. By knowing the setting, one is able to create a mental image of the lifestyle of the couple. The reader is also given a description of the Civil War battleground of Shiloh when the characters visit. The battleground plays a significant role by symbolizing the battle/ destruction for their marriage and/or a place where their marriage could begin anew. James Joyce’s “Araby” provides the reader with significant details about setting that allow the reader to understand the characters and what is happening throughout the story. “Araby” begins on a street in Dublin called North Richmond, where “an uninhabited hours of toy stories stood at the blind end, detached from neighbors in a square ground.” Throughout the story the narrator remains unnamed and lives with his Aunt and Uncle. The narrator describes the block on which he lives and gives a description of a former tenant, a priest, who died in a back room of the house. The narrator finds the library of the house interesting and becomes attached to three literary works. He then speaks of being part of a group of neighborhood boys that play in the streets. A description of Mangan’s sister is given; the narrator is infatuated by the girl and describes his liking her as an obsession. The girl eventually speaks to him about attending a church-sponsored fair that is called Araby. The narrator does not answer due to nervousness. The girl lets the narrator know she will not be able to make it to the retreat and, he promises to bring her a gift from Araby. He then becomes obsessed with thinking about Araby and buying the girl a gift. On the night he is supposed to attend the fair, his uncle is late returning home and, he must wait to get money from him. He gets very anxious, and his aunt tells him that he may have to miss the bazaar, but his uncle does come home, apologetic that he had forgotten. After asking the boy if he knows a poem entitled "The Arab 's Farewell to His Steed," the uncle bids the boy farewell and gives him a coin. As he arrives, Araby is closing but he still proceeds to the center of the fair. In the end the narrator does not purchase a gift for the girl after overhearing a conversation between a shop girl and two men. The story ends with the narrator describing himself as a “creature driven and derided by vanity" and his "eyes burned with anguish and anger"(DiYanni, 2007, p.86-90). Place and story are closely integrated in "Araby." The alleyway, the busy commercial street, the open door of Mangan’s house, the room in back where the priest died, the way to school—all are parts of the locations that shape the life and consciousness of the narrator. Before the narrator goes to Araby, it is his thoughts about this exotic, mysterious location that crystallize for him his adoration of Mangan’s sister, who is somehow locked into an "Eastern enchantment" of devotion and unfulfilled love. At the story’s end the lights are out, the place is closing down, and the narrator recognizes Araby as a symbol of his own lack of reality and unreachable hopes. Seemingly, all his aims are dashed by his adolescent lack of power and by the drunken and passive-aggressive uncle (DiYanni, 2007, p 86-90). Eudora Welty 's ' 'A Worn Path, ' ' is another example of how setting helps to portray the story and characters to the reader. “A Worn Path” follows the elderly African-American women named Phoenix Jackson, who is walking down a path into town. Phoenix complains constantly as she wanders down the path through the woods into town. She eventually runs into a dog and ends up knocking him on the head with her cane, which throws her off balance and she falls into a ditch. The dog’s owner, a white hunter, comes by and helps her out of the ditch and offers to help take her into town. After a harsh exchange off negative words, the hunter jokingly points the gun at her and asks if she is scared. She answers with “no” and he leaves her. She eventually reaches town and asks a white women to tie her shoe, which the woman agrees to. She arrives at her destination, a doctor’s office, and announces to the staff that she is there to get medicine for her grandson. After receiving a nickel from the nurse she is on her way and leaves to purchase a paper windmill for her grandson (DiYanni, 2007, p 91-97). “A Worn Path,” uses the element of setting to help portray the story to the reader. In the story no one is consciously out to get her, but the society is uncaring and indifferent. The story is only incidentally about race, rudeness or cruelty. These are just a part of the entire package that comes with existence in life. The man does not shoot her and, people in town give her the medicine she needs, which she received for free, are also rude to her. There is no one that is out to get her; people just don’t care and don’t want to do much to help her out. The setting, the path, and the title of story are indicative and symbolic of this. The path itself is not out to get her, it just is. But it sure makes life difficult for her. The setting is indicative and symbolic of the path she takes in her struggle to survive against uncaring and indifferent societal forces. Even the boy in the woods lacks motivation for threatening her. He doesn 't hate her and isn 't noticeably racist. He threatens her just for the fun of it. The setting of this story gave the reader a sense of what people are like in the town and where the town was located, both of which added to the story. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” provides the setting element throughout the story that aide in the development of character and story. “A Rose for Emily,” begins at the funeral of Ms. Emily. As it states in the story, “the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one can save an old man-servant- a combined gardener and cook- had seen in the last ten years.” Ms. Emily was a mystery to the many citizens of her town. The story depicts several different times in her life. We learn of how Ms. Emily looks at different stages as well as how she was portrayed by the town in those different stages. Emily’s father never paid taxes and Emily kept with that tradition. Throughout the story we learn of the great love of Emily’s, Homer Baron, but nothing is ever told of what has happened to him. After Emily’s burial, several of the men force the upstairs open, which had been closed off for several years. There they find what the rotten corpse of Homer Barron is evidently. Even more grotesque, they find a long strand of iron-gray hair on the pillow next to his remains (DiYanni, 2007, p. 79-85).
Setting within the story of “A Rose for Emily” was portrayed by the author in many instances throughout its entirety. Intrinsic to the development of both character and conflict, the setting of "A Rose for Emily" is Jefferson, the county seat of Faulkner 's fictional kingdom that he named Yoknapatawpha County, a county in which Colonel Sartorius is an important figure. Devastated by the emancipation of slaves after the Civil War, the South was inundated by Northern opportunists, known as carpetbaggers. Against the Northerners who had no code of conduct, the newly-poor plantation owners retained their aristocratic arrogance. And, the code of chivalry of such men as Emily Grierson 's father protected the women against encounters with men such as Homer Barron. This code of chivalry keeps Colonel Sartorius from taxing the poor spinster and Judge Stevens from confronting Emily about the smell emanating from her house. However, the new generations of the South are removed from these antiquated ways, and it is this conflict between twentieth century and antebellum ways that is presented in Emily 's character.
The element of setting was portrayed differently in each of these stories. In “Shiloh,” we are brought into the world of Leroy and Norma Jean in Tennessee. The story’s setting in portrayed in just a few places, the apartment and Shiloh. In Araby we are taken inside the house of the author, to the streets and block around his house and finally to fair called Araby. In “A Worn Path” we travel with Phoenix through the path in the forest into town, we learn of her character, how she perceives the world around her and how it perceives her. In “A Rose for Emily” we travel through time in the south to learn of Emily’s life, how the public saw her, how they saw her family and we learn of how she spent the rest of the days of her life. Each of these has provided the reader with an overall element of setting which attributed to the story and character’s development throughout each.
Setting is a littary element that brings the reader to a certain time, place, destination in which the author’s characters play out their story. Each story has its own uniqueness on how it approaches the element of setting in the development of the story. Without setting being present within a literary work we would not know where characters are, we would not know how they might talk in an accent; we might not know how they dressed, etc. The literary works of art “Shiloh,” “Araby,” “A Worn Path,” and “A Rose for Emily” have all provided the reader with the literary element of setting in order to capture the story and characters portrayed.

References
DiYanni, R. (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Laga, B. (1999). What is Literature? A Refusal to Define or Limit. Mesa State College. Retrieved 2010, August 9 from http://home.mesastate.edu/~blaga/theoryindex/literaturex.html

References: DiYanni, R. (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Laga, B. (1999). What is Literature? A Refusal to Define or Limit. Mesa State College. Retrieved 2010, August 9 from http://home.mesastate.edu/~blaga/theoryindex/literaturex.html