Imagined Aff Setting

Setting is a critical element in both fiction and nonfiction, as it provides the framework needed for what is being discussed.
Every writer begins their own inventive process differently. While some start creating new characters, others focus on exploring the world in which their character lives in. To make the setting come alive the author provides significant details so that it helps readers visualize how it is important.
Short story, Ind Aff, composed by Fay Weldon, discourses the thoughts and self-realization as the setting of the story’s atmosphere is unfolded early, creating a sense of melancholy that is prevalent throughout the story. The most apparent use of setting is the mentioning of the country that the couples are in and reveals
about another significant event that took place in that exact location with a similar situation. The story follows an affair with a 25-year old female student in an intimate relationship with her 46-year old professor, Peter, as they travel in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, where the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand occurred long after. The setting plays a very different, yet still vital, role in the overall story. Part of the influence of setting is the historical events that occurred there that are detailed to us. Weldon’s way of setting the story in the same location where the assassination transpired shows that he meant to portray the counterparts between Princip’s and the narrator’s situations. Throughout the story, the narrator sympathizes with the assassin because he is misunderstood and because of the choice he has to make, just like herself. While having a discussion with her lover about this, she takes in note “two footprints set into pavement which mark the spot where the young assassin Princip stood to shoot the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife” (Weldon 201). The mentions of the footprints are used to serve as a clue of the consequences that are to arise due to one’s errors.
Then again, setting portrays a fundamental part as it sets both mood and tone. In Ind Aff, the setting impacts how readers feel about the content and influences how it is evoked. Right from the introduction, the mood is specifically settled once the narrator says "This is a sad story. It has to be"(Weldon 140). Reading that first sentence you can indicate that the mood is going to create a sense of distress and lament, driving you to distinguish what the tone of the short story might resemble. As the setting shapes the mind-set to one of downpour, the mental picture you have in your mind starts to be clear as you now can recount that the story will exude a tone of irony. Connecting the story's two characters and their bleak surroundings, the author’s fine work sets the state of mind and tone by giving descriptive language to bring out sights, smells, and different sensations. Given the author’s careful setup, as the setting passes on the characters are paving their way to a final confrontation showing us no matter how we utilize the setting in different places, the mood and tone will always be dependent where they are located. In this perception, the settings get to appear as the evolving the point of interest and distinctive mind-sets of the character other than just being the locality.
Now another way the author clarifies the setting is the weather and how the narrator takes advantage of it.
Weather plays a major component in the setting for this foreshadows what is going to happen or what the narrator is about to realize. The couple was supposed to have a romantic picnic and make love afterwards, but due to weather complications, plans had to be altered. The weather in Sarajevo was supposed to be clear, but the narrator begins to describe some “black clouds” (Weldon 202) that she sees overhead. The black clouds represent the inevitable and blocks out any divine illumination that may appear. Just as the black clouds roll in, it begins to rain, creating a sense of impending disaster that is about to happen or currently occurring. In a way, the rain leads as a sense of error, reminding the couple of what they had done. As the couple tries to shield away from the rain, the narrator begins to slowly question their relationship with each water droplet that constantly hits her. The narrator’s mind then reverts back to Princip’s “footprints,” saying that during the assassination there was no rain. This implies that since there was no way the rain could “fall” on Princip’s footprints, he was not reminded about the error that he was going to commit. He went forward with the assassination, but if the rain had started to pour, hopefully he would have changed his mind. In the end it was too
late.
Next, is that setting provides a background for the character. If you observe carefully, setting can pass on importance through connections with the two characters. For instance, in Ind Aff, the setting for the narrator’s experiences change as she progresses, gives us more detail about who and what the character is feeling. The progressions are vital to the narrator's improvement as a person, because it shows how these surroundings are impacting her. What the author does is to create a setting that manifests the feeling of her love and shortly after her regret. She builds the character through explanations of her emotions through her surroundings, “In fact so far as I could see, it was no contest at all between his wife and myself” (Weldon 141), she says avoiding the downpour. So far, she begins to question her relationship with her lover even more, causing her have an internal conflict with herself, thus making the setting help the readers connect to the character's build as a person hoping to cause a moment of truth.
Now the physical location, the restaurant in which they enter to avoid the downpour, is