Setting and Irony Function and Significance of Setting

Setting The setting refers to where and when a story takes place –Time –Place

Physical environment The geographic location (i.e. country, city) The natural environment (e.g. a forest, mountain top or desert) Buildings Furniture Clothes Sounds Smells and weather

Social Environment This includes –manners, –customs, –social class –and atmosphere or mood

Time This includes –time of day, –season, –Year, –and historical era

Significance of setting Authors use setting to develop –Themes –Character –And plot Thinking about the setting/s can help you to get more insight into the underlying meanings of the story

Function or Significance of Setting To show what the characters are feeling –The setting is often a reflection of human emotion To provide an ironic contrast in attitudes –Between characters –Between an individual and society To enhance the theme of the literary work

To analyze setting, consider: What is the significance of the place and time for the ideas in the story? Does the author create a strong sense of place? How? How do the settings in the story relate to the characters and the plot of the story? (For example, does a character’s home give you insights into the character?

To analyze setting, consider: (cond’t) What is the daily life of the character? Does the story contain local colour? –Dialect, dress, mannerisms, customs of a partircular place? How would the story be different if you removed descriptions of time and place? How would the story be different if you changed the time and place.

Using sensory details to create setting

Gloomy In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and stair case,I kept my workshop of filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation. (ch4)

Powerful I quitted my seat, and walked on, although the darkness and storm increased every minute, and the thunder burst with a terrific crash over my head. It was echoed from Saleve, the Juras, and the Alps of Savoy; vivid flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes, illuminating the lake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire; then for an instant every thing seemed of a pitchy darkness, until the eye recovered itself from the preceding flash. (ch7)

Majestic The abrupt sides of vast mountains were before me; the icy wall of the glacier overhung me; a few shattered pines were scattered around; and the solemn silence of this glorious presence- chamber of imperial nature was broken only by the brawling waves or the fall of some vast fragment, the thunder sound of the avalanche or the cracking, reverberated along the mountains, of the accumulated ice, which, through the silent working of immutable laws, was ever and anon rent and torn, as if it had been but a plaything in their hands. (ch10)

Rainforest

Sunrise

Rainforest

Sunrise

Abandoned Building

Arctic

Irony: 3 Types A difference between appearance and reality

1. Verbal irony Occurs when an author says one thing and means something else (often said sarcastically) “Why, no one would dare argue that there could be anything more important in choosing a college than its closeness to the beach.”

2. Dramatic irony Occurs when an audience perceives something that a character in the literature does not know. This occurs in The Merchant of Venice –Portia disguises herself as a law clerk (the audience knows but not the other characters)

3. Situational irony Occurs when there is a difference between the expected result and actual result. Example: if a professional pickpocket had his own pocket picked just as he was in the act of picking someone else’s pocket.

Use of Irony The contrasts generated by the use of irony add dimension to the theme of the story.