Welcome to 4.2! In this guide, we’ll be talking about how characters interact with their setting and what the setting does for the narrative. It’s an extension of the conversation we started in 3.3. To recap, setting includes the social, cultural, and historical situation during which the events of the text occur.
Let’s begin by discussing what the setting of a story does for the story as a whole, before discussing how individual characters interact with the setting.
The setting of a story can play an important role in establishing the atmosphere and mood of a narrative.
Atmosphere is the general feeling or environment that is created by the setting and the events of the story. It can include elements such as weather (is it raining? Is it sunny?), lighting (It was a dark and stormy night…), and sound (is thunder clapping? Are the birds singing?).
Atmosphere is directly created by the setting: it’s how the setting makes us feel. Furthermore, the atmosphere of a story can be influenced by the cultural and historical context of the setting. If a story is set on the evening before a battle that our main characters historically lose, for example, it can give the work an atmosphere of dread due to its historical context. Culturally, certain settings have become associated with certain atmospheres: for example, the beach is associated with relaxation and leisure.
Mood is the emotional tone of a work of literature. It can include feelings such as tension, suspense, fear, romance, and so on.
The setting of a story can help to establish the mood by creating a certain atmosphere. For example, setting a work somewhere dark and gloomy, like the moors of Wuthering Heights, can create a work with a mood of fear and unease. On the other hand, setting a work on a bright and sunny beach can create a mood of relaxation and happiness. (Agatha Christie’s A Caribbean Mystery starts with the cheery atmosphere of a beachside resort; that atmosphere makes the murder that occurs even more shocking.)
When you’re looking at a piece of fiction, ask yourself why does this work have this setting?
Now, let’s see what setting can do for characters specifically.
Simply speaking, characters interact with their setting all the time, just like we do.
To begin with, setting can determine what characters have and do not have access to. This can affect the plot dramatically and dictate the character’s motives, decisions and development.
Furthermore, the environment that a character inhabits can provide information about that character.
The type of location where a character lives or works, for example, can reveal a lot about their social status, occupation, and lifestyle.
The environment can also reveal information about a character's personality and values.
Setting doesn't have to be a static background for the characters and their actions. It can also be an active participant of the story and provide obstacles, challenges, and opportunities for the characters.
In a story where people are working to prevent a flood, for instance, the conflict is driven by the setting (a place where there’s about to be a flood.)
In some stories, the setting can act as a character itself because so much depends on it.
Furthermore, the setting often contextualizes the meaning of events.
Finally, setting can also play a role in the narrative structure of a story. For example, certain seasons have a symbolic quality to them, and having events happen during those seasons could give different dimensions of meaning to them. Additionally, setting can also directly reflect the events occurring in the narrative. For example, it could rain at the same time that a character is sad in order to emphasize that character’s sadness.
However, some works subvert this, as George Eliot does in Adam Bede.
“For if it be true that Nature at certain moments seems charged with a presentiment of one individual lot must it not also be true that she seems unmindful, unconscious of another? For there is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature’s mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives?” - Eliot, Adam Bede
In our next guide, we’ll be back to discussing character. Specifically, character archetypes.