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Setting

Setting: is a fundamental aspect of fiction, along with plot, character, theme, and style. The setting provides the backdrop to the story and helps create mood.

Common Examples of Setting

We use setting in just about every story, and even many jokes. For example, jokes that start with "a guy walks into a bar" includes the setting of the bar to create expectations of what may occur in that space. When we tell even inconsequential stories we include setting, such as:

I was sitting at my desk at work when...

It was sometime past midnight and...

The rain was howling outside...

Orators often include the setting in which they are giving their speeches in order to tie in their message with the immediate surroundings. Here are some examples of setting in famous speeches:__

We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

—John F. Kennedy, "We choose to go to the moon" speech

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation....We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now.

—Martin Luther King, Jr., "I have a dream" speech

Significance of Setting in Literature

Setting is an extremely important aspect of almost every piece of fiction and drama, and can be an important element in poetry as well. In many narrative examples the setting can act almost as a nonhuman character, affecting the characters in many different large and small ways. Indeed, most plot lines are so tied to their settings that they could not be put in other places, time periods, or socioeconomic environments.

Examples of Setting in Literature

Example #1

PROLOGUE: Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

(Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare)

In this short excerpt of the prologue from Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare sets up both the city in which the action takes place—Verona, Italy—as well as giving a taste of the socioeconomic statuses of the characters. Shakespeare refers to the two households as being "both alike in dignity," which will greatly affect the way that the characters relate. Because of the high status of both the Montagues and Capulets, Romeo and Juliet are held to certain standards, especially in the era and city they lived in. A modern film version of the play chose to move the setting to Verona Beach, California, which changed the socioeconomic statuses of the characters involved.

Example #2

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went to Madrid.

("Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway)

Ernest Hemingway was known for his style of succinct description and short sentences. The opening paragraph to his short story "Hills Like White Elephants" contains the majority of the descriptive details of the piece. The "American and the girl" are the two characters, and their bleak conversation is mimicked in the setting that is hot, white, and unforgiving.

Example #3

Every year, the end of summer

lazy and golden, invites grief and regret:

suddenly it's 1980, winter buffets us,

winds strike like cruelty out of Dickens. Somehow

we have seven horses for six stalls.

("Jack" by Maxine Kumin)

Setting examples are abundant in poetry. In this contemporary poem, "Jack," Maxine Kumin reflects back on a different time and place. She remembers the exact year and season in which a horse named Jack did not have a stall for himself. This reflection of the brutal winter sets the mood of nostalgia and regret that permeates the entirety of the short poem.