The Power of Setting

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Lets talk about lunch for just a minute. Food is something that all humans need to survive. When people talk about lunch with their friends or family, one question is always asked: Where they will be dining? Literature is no different. Without a setting or place for the story to take place, there is no story at all. Lunch for people is the same; they must have a place to go. There are many elements that allow the reader to make a connection, utilizing their feelings and beliefs ,with the story. A writer must have a setting in place to make any of these key components work. The setting can be seen as the foundation or concrete slab that the story is built upon. Without a strong foundation; the story would fall apart if any weight were added to it. Key elements like symbolism, style, and the themes must merge with the setting to help provide a visual image for the reader. This holds true for, “The House on Mango Street,” “The Lottery,” and “A & P”, Cisneros, Jackson, and Updike understand the importance of setting in a story.

It would be almost impossible for the reader to create a mental image of what is happening in the stories without understand where it is taking place. In, “The House on Mango Street”, Cisneros's intensifies the reader's ability to make a mental image, by adding enormous descriptive detail. “The laundromat downstairs had been boarded up because it had been robbed two days before and the owner had painted on the wood YES WE'RE OPEN so as not to lose business” (Roberts 48). The setting that Cisneros provides allows us to make inferences about the main character's neighborhood. This lays down a foundation for the main theme of the story. The child's parents in the story always state they will have a real hom...

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...ke a person think about a warm sunny grassland, they calm down and forget about some of their internal worries. When a person thinks about a burnt desolate wasteland, they become on edge and a feeling of fear might come over them. Setting is the groundwork that is required before the story can be built. It is what shapes the characters, actions, and dialogue in the story. A story will not be fully developed without a setting and these stories really showed the importance of setting. “The House on Mango Street” showed how a setting can help show the true plot of a story. “The Lottery” exposed the ability for the setting to give the reader a type of foreshadowing that cannot be acquired any other way. Lastly, “A & P”, gives us an example of how setting can be used to show the true feelings of a character. The setting affects all parts of a story with great magnitude.

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