Scout Wilkins

Trevor Horwath

Aleah Hopkins

Chapter 4- Setting

5 Vocab:

  1. Setting: the time and place of a story; may include climate, social, psychological, or spiritual state of the characters
  2. Locale: a place where something happens or is set, or that has particular events associated with it
  3. Regionalism: literary representation of a specific locale that consciously uses the particulars of geography, custom, history, folklore, or speech
  4. Imagery: descriptive, sensory language used to present readers with a mental image of the surrounding within a literary work
  5. Realism: attempt, to reproduce faithfully the surface appearance of life, especially that of ordinary people in everyday situations

5 Insights:

  1. It adds realism, mood, and helps contribute to the atmosphere.
  2. Setting can symbolize whole ways of life or systems of value.
  3. The individuals in the stories are embedded in the specific context, and the more we know of the setting, and of the relationship of the characters to the setting, the more likely we are to understand the characters and the story.
  4. Often the setting is a key to discovering interpretations of the story beyond the experience of individual characters and connecting it to traditions, phases of history, and social issues.
  5. In stories that you have already read as well as in those in the chapter, various settings provide historical and social contexts for the characters’ experiences.

Throughout the story, The Lady with the Dog, by Anton Chekhov, the description of the setting using seasons, enhances the mood of the situation in which the characters are involved in. For example, when Chekhov describes the initial meeting, he writes, “They walked and talked of the strange light on the sea: the water was of a soft warm lilac hue, and there was a golden streak from the moon upon it” (251). The beauty of the sea contributes to the mood of desire, which is how the characters first feel when meeting eachother. This is unexpected to the audience, because they were told through the characterization of Gurov, that he thought of women as the “lower race”, but with the creation of a beautiful ocean in the background, the audience knows that this relationship will not be Gurov’s typical interactions. In addition to the setting of the seasons, winter symbolizes oneś youth to Gurov. For instance, Gurov explains his winter routine he states, ¨ When the first snow has fallen, on the first day of sledge-driving it is pleasant to see the white earth, the white roofs, to draw soft, delicious breath, and the seasons bring back the days of oneś youth¨(255). Therefore, Gurov is symbolizing winter for his past, and explains how day after day his life became a bore after going through the same process everyday through winter. Also allowing the audience to see the emotion Gurov is expressing through winter, which is tiredness and depression. Gurov begins to get depressed when he starts to visualize Anna Sergeyevna, and realizes he may never see her again. Further, the exotic and vacationing nature of the island of Yalta represents feelings of safety and paradise within Gurov and Anna. In turn, this gives them the mental state that no repercussions will occur for their dishonest actions and desires that develop on the island. Gurov is characterized as free and adventurous while at the island, which differs greatly from his reserved, hidden and pessimistic nature at Moscow. This is evident through Gurov’s opinion that “Experience often repeated, truly bitter experience, had taught him long ago that with decent people, especially Moscow people- always slow to move and irresolute- every intimacy, which at first so agreeably diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure, inevitably grows into a regular problem of extreme intricacy, and in the long run the situation becomes unbearable” (250-251). The contradicting nature of the two settings in this story bring about a drastically different character in Gurov as well and allows the affair between him and Anna to eventually occur. Understanding the purpose of this conflicting setting is key to interpreting and analyzing the characters and more importantly their actions and hidden reasons, boredom and a trapped feeling generated by the harsh winters in Moscow, for committing them. Therefore concluding, stories rely on settings to enhance the other elements of fiction.