Just Where Is It? An Overview of Setting

Setting is an important part of a story, but it can be helpful to break it down in order to better identify what it is and how and why it appears. In my post on “Volar” I alluded to the nuances that Setting can take. Specifically, Setting can be described in four different but related ways:

• Spatial: This parameter deals with the physical setting, ranging from natural and rural settings like: mountains, forests, deserts, and even man made features like buildings, rooms, roads, etc.
• Political: Cities, states, nations. This is when a setting is bounded by a man-specified, but not necessarily man-made boundary. This includes countries, cities, counties, etc.
• Temporal: When does the story take place, and how long it takes.
• Cultural: When peoples or groups share a common heritage that, despite spatial or political differences, brings them together. The easiest way to think of this is in terms of religion. If you attend a religious service in one country and the same one in a different country, you can expect there to be some similarities.

A story like Robert Galbraith's Cuckoo's Calling has a clear political setting: London. But this also means it has distinct spatial settings as well, as London is a major urban area. Cultural setting gets trickier, especially as the spatial setting gets larger and the political setting gets a greater population density. For example, Cuckoo's Calling follows a private detective as he has to deal with people from a few distinct subcultures: the fashion industry, law offices, and half-way homes. The sequel, The Silkworm, still largely takes place in London, but deals with the publishing industry juxtaposed against a different class of lower income than that found in Cuckoo’s Calling. Any given spatial or political location will have different cultural settings, only some of which the author will use.

The next distinction to bear in mind for setting is scope. Some settings will be large and vast and others small, and most stories maneuver from one setting to another. Cuckoo's Calling doesn't leave the city proper of London, but contrast this with any fantasy epic, like The Hobbit where the characters traverse caves, forests, mountains, towns, and cities: they never stay in any one place for long. But even a city can be a large setting to deal with, while others, like “Volar” are confined to an apartment or a room, like Raskolnikov's apartment in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, or Gregor Samsa's room in Kafka's “The Metamorphosis”.

It can be difficult to separate one setting from another, especially when dealing with the scope of temporal and cultural settings. A story with a temporal setting of 1930 and a political setting of the United States of America will be very unusual if it does not have something to do with the Great Depression, i.e., The Grapes of Wrath, which will greatly shape the Cultural setting. Other settings will be more allegorical, like the film and TV show M*A*S*H, which took place during the Korean War, but were more about the Vietnam War. Other settings will be more flexible; a good example of this would be most police procedural shows.

Setting is an important part of understanding a narrative because it, quite literally, gives a backdrop to the story. It is the first way to contextualize and understand just what is going on and why it is significant. Setting, literally, grounds a narrative in a time and a place, even if they are imagined, and give us an opportunity to better understand the characters, events, and themes of a story as we better understand the world they interact with.

So, whatever you're reading, pay attention to the setting. If the author has something, a simple event or the entire story, take place somewhere or someplace specific, it's probably for a reason.

Flying High and Coming Low – Setting in Judith Oritz Cofer's “Volar”

We underestimate the importance of setting in fiction. It's easy to overlook when there’s so much else going on. There are characters, events, the conflict and action that make up the plot, but it all has to happen somewhere.

I like teaching setting with Judith Oritz Cofer's story “Volar.” This story isn't about what the characters do as much as how they respond to their environment. It's about the setting and how the characters perceive and interact with their surroundings, so it doesn't start by describing the setting.

The story begins with an unnamed female protagonist and narrator recollecting her girlhood love of Supergirl comics, which she kept in her bedroom closet. This little detail is the first indication of setting – for whatever reason, she kept her beloved comic books in her closet. If these were something to be hidden, they'd likely be under, or even inside, the bed, and there isn't anything to suggest she was trying to hide them; on the contrary, she spent her allowance on them, so her parents probably knew about them. This suggests there's no room on a desk, shelf, or drawer for them. Already it starts to feel a little claustrophobic.

The protagonist then describes her childhood fantasy of climbing to the top of her apartment building and becoming Supergirl, including a range of physiological changes (best saved for a discussion on race and ethnicity representations). She would then, as Supergirl, observe the community around her and comment about it – specifically using her super-breath to disturb the intimidating landlord. She would then awake in “our tiny apartment” (286) and go into the kitchen where her mother would try to convince her father that they could vacation in Puerto Rico and visit their family, and he would comment on the cost.

From within the kitchen, the only image outside the apartment is from the kitchen window: “The view was of a dismal alley that was littered with refuse thrown from windows. The space was too narrow for anyone larger than a skinny child to enter safely, so it was never cleaned.”

The first thing to take away from this is that settings can be confining. It's not as overtly restrictive as, for example, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” but there is a certain claustrophobia about this little story, which is made all the more apparent by the character's longings to leave it. The protagonist wants to become Supergirl so she can rise above and exert power; the mother wants to visit their family, while the father reminds that them they don’t have the fiscal means to go on a vacation to Puerto Rico.

The claustrophobic setting itself represents their situation. The story never specifies where they live (Cofer herself was born in Puerto Rico and then moved to New Jersey and later Georgia) but their financial situation shows itself through the parents' conversation and by the quality of their apartment. If they could afford to fly to Puerto Rico, they'd probably have a nicer apartment. If they'd had a better situation in Puerto Rico, they would return to be with family. Meanwhile, the protagonist shirks her biological heritage when she imagines having Super Girl's blonde, straight hair instead of her own dark, curly hair. Each aspect of their lives are confining, whether it's something geographical, like their distance from home; financial like their inability to visit Puerto Rico. It's even cultural, demonstrated by the protagonist's interest in American comics while her parents mingle Spanish and English, or her desires for Super Girl's straight blonde hair, or even something so simple as the confining descriptions of their apartment, juxtaposed with a longing for something more expansive – the power to fly.

After all, “volar” is Spanish for “to fly.”

Looking at setting gives us a way to contextualize the stories we read from a variety of perspectives. “Volar” has economic, cultural, and spatial conditions and uses these settings to create an atmosphere that is, like I said above, claustrophobic. Authors use setting to develop themes, employ symbols, or give a historical or cultural background: setting provides basic information to help the reader negotiate the storyworld. By paying attention to how the spaces in a story are presented, we can get an idea at what will be important for the story.

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Works Cited

Cofer, Judith Oritz. "Volar." The Norton Introduction to Literature. 11th ed. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. W.W. Norton, 2013. 286-287. Print.

Theme: Repetition & Abstract Concepts in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Bablyon Revisited”

Themes are scattered in fragments throughout a piece of literature. Identifying a theme is not simply a matter of “X marks the spot,” but rather a gathering of similar and related elements.

For example, in F. Scott Fitzgerald's “Babylon Revisited,” a spiritual sequel to The Great Gatsby, a man named Charlie returns to Paris after he has put his life back together to gain custody of his daughter, who is being raised by his deceased wife's sister. Much of the story plays out in flashbacks and with commentary on the past. It begins with Charlie inquiring after old friends from a bartender, and describes how the places and people once were: “the once-clamorous women's room” (699) and “the head barman, Paul, who in the latter days of the bull market had come to work in his own custom built car” (699) Most poignantly, however, outside of the hotel and bar, the narrator describes “the fire-red, gas-blue, ghost-green signs shone smokily through the tranquil rain” (700).

After conversations and observations that address a once-was past, the notion of ghosts stands out. It suggests this story is not just about a man in Paris in the years after the stock market crash, but it isn't a story about actual ghosts either: don't expect a spectral Gatsby to appear and offer advice. It's about memory and ghosts in a more abstract, thematic sense.

It would then be expected the word “ghost” will appear and reappear multiple times in the story, but it doesn't. There is only one more instance of “ghost” in the story: when two old friends, Duncan and Lorraine, encounter Charlie while he's lunching with his daughter, they are described as “ghosts out of the past” (704), but they aren't ethereal phantoms. The question is then, why describe them as ghosts?

Ghosts are intangible manifestations of the dead. They remind us of the, generally unpleasant, past. Prince Hamlet's father doesn't appear to tell Hamlet how great of a king Hamlet will be or how wonderful heaven is: he haunts Elsinore to describe how he was murdered, demand revenge, and bemoan his hellish condition. We can then say ghosts represent unfortunate pasts that cause problems in the present (why else haunt?).

Therefore, when we encounter references to the past in “Babylon Revisited,” whether subtle reminders or flashbacks, we encounter the same themes of regret, sadness, and dealing with the past, specifically, a past of wasteful fun preceding the stock market crash. Charlie is indeed haunted, and not just by the metaphoric ghosts Lorraine and Duncan; almost every page has some kind of mournful reminder of a lost life that left his wife dead and himself in a sanitarium.

When reading for theme, pay careful attention to what similarities emerge in subtle repetitions. Sometimes we don't understand the themes or the repetitions until we've already read a piece through. I didn't notice the “ghost” references and therefore didn't appreciate the deeper thematic meaning they gave the story until the second time I taught it. So, when looking for themes, look for those repetitions and similarities between the repetitions. There are different ways to represent any given theme, and the context of the piece will affect it.

Theme is one of the ways we are able to make personal connections with literature. It takes us from the distant, different events described by a story or a poem and gives us a way to make them personal. It’s more than 80 years since Fitzgerald published “Babylon Revisited” and almost 90 since The Great Gatsby, and yet we still read these and older stories. It’s because the themes gives us a way to understand not just different cultures, but it gives us ways to understand and identify how we see and engage with the world around us.

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Works Cited

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "Babylon Revisited." The Norton Introduction to Literature. 11th ed. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. W.W. Norton, 2013. 699-713. Print.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print.

A Brief Introduction To Theme

Theme can be hard to pin down. It's what a story or poem or play is about, but not in the sense of “he does this and she did that.” Rarely will a character or narrator boldly announce the themes of their texts, but finding the theme is the first step in interpretation.

Most stories try to make the events and people they describe appear as realistic as possible. For example, Yann Martel and Daniel Defoe went to great lengths to make their novels Life of Pi and Robinson Crusoe seem real as they plunged their protagonists into tales of shipwrecks and survival. These novels were published centuries apart, but both of them have characters whose lives are suddenly and drastically changed by a shipwreck. It doesn't matter one had an island with benign flora and fauna and the other was stranded on a raft to fend for and defend himself: they had to survive for a long time with what little they had.

Survival is an abstract concept. Any narrative where the characters are placed in a situation where the main concern is find food and shelter or die, it's safe to say it’s a tale of survival. Because survival is an abstract concept and because it appears in other narratives, like Lord of the Flies or Hatchet, we can call it a theme. However, it’s not going to be the only theme in these narratives. Just as a theme will appear in multiple narratives, multiple elements in a narrative will complicate and contribute to the themes of the narrative. If each of these were only about a single theme, they’d be the same story telling the same events the same way.

Theme develops through the repetition of narrative elements that complicate and advance the narrative.

Robinson Crusoe is not just about survival, but also colonization, ingenuity, and the middle class. The novel starts with his father admonishing him not to go to sea but to live a comfortable middle class life, and much of Crusoe’s narrative is about how he maintains and improves his conditions on the island. Crusoe doesn't just survive: he thrives. He catalogs his wares, his crop yields, his animals, and his activities, and even projects what he needs to do to maintain a comfortable existence as he becomes master of his domain. Every material aspect is accounted for. He rises from a poor situation to a higher one, advancing from being at the whim of nature (the shipwreck) to commanding it as he shapes his island.

Life of Pi isn't quite so positive. Pi has to struggle to survive, and rather than gradually improving, Pi’s condition gradually worsens. He has no trees to harvest nor seeds to plant – let alone ground to plant them in – and Richard Parker perpetually threatens his life. Pi catalogs what he has not to measure his wealth, but because once it's gone, it’s gone. Pi certainly has to be ingenious to survive, but the themes of the middle class and colonization are absent. If anything, loss factors much more into Life of Pi: he loses his family, his home, and his animals, in a single event and is left with a few bare supplies, Richard Parker, and his faith. Pi Patel survives but he does not thrive.

Theme is about identifying major issues and concepts that appear and reappear within and across stories. It involves associating not just the entire narrative with a single abstraction, but how the narrative repeats similar topics and issues, how these repetitions can cue us to broader concepts, and how these concepts reappear in other stories.

A Prayer of Love

Aphra Behn was one of the first professional female writers, famous primarily as a dramatist. She has some poetry to her name, including a three stanza piece called, “On Her Loving Two Equally.” Like the other love poems and songs I've written about this month, it's in first person, but that's where the similarities end. This poem has two characteristics that set it apart. First, the speaker is torn between two suitors, not serenading one. Second, the speaker is a woman.

The two men in question are Damon and Alexis. The first stanza suggests neither could have caught her eye without the other, and the second stanza says when she's with one of them, she thinks about the other. There's no indication she loves one more than another, as the poem starts off with the lines,

How strongly does my passion flow,
Divided equally twixt two? (1-2)

The speaker never tells us much about either man, save putting them in contrast with one another: the only reason Damon had managed to subdue her heart (3) is Alexis had already done some wooing (4). Alexis couldn't prove his love (5) without Damon's aid (6). The two are both in competition and indebted to each other. The speaker gives no indication to the forms of their relationships, how they met, how they fell in love, or how Damon or Alexis see, or even know about, each other.

There's any number of things that could be read into Behn's vagaries. The poem could be about how love...

• ...is fickle, as she has to decide between two men. She invokes cupid's aid at the very end.
• ...is something beyond control, even something divine or supernatural. She calls cupid “though mighty winged god” (13).
• ...is blind. She's willing to go either way. She just wants someone else to make the decision for her.

But being vague about the men is the least of her creative endeavor. The last three lines indicate she's in a dilemma that will have negative consequences:

But which, O Cupid, wilt thou take?If Damon, all my hopes are crossed;Or that of my Alexis, I am lost. (16-18)

If she ends up with Alexis, she’ll be denied her hopes. If Damon, she’ll be lost. Or maybe it means that being with Damon will ensure her hopes will be gained. If Alexis, she will find herself, but there’s little in the text to suggest that.

There are only a few things the poem makes sure: she loves two men equally, she can't make up her mind, and so she turns elsewhere, well aware of the consequences.

Behn's poem, in the end, is a prayer, and a prayer, regardless of your belief system, is an appeal to something beyond your own faculties and abilities. People pray to divinity because they need or want something they can't get on their own, and so seek the favor of another who can, who (depending on your belief system) may not even need you. In the end, I think love itself is like that, and I think that is part of the issue the poem is addressing. The kind of romantic, passionate love the speaker of the poem is dealing with isn't the kind to be divided and shared. It's personal and meant for a single other person. Love like this is asking someone else to do for you what you can't do for yourself.

It's like Waller's “Go Lovely Rose”: doing everything that you can, and then putting your faith and your heart in the hands of another.

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Works Cited

Behn, Aphra. "On Her Loving Two Equally." The Norton Introduction to Literature. 11th ed. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. W.W. Norton, 2013. 860-861. Print.

More Than Skin Deep

I want to talk about a love song, actually two love songs, one with substantial derision and another with substantial respect.

The one I respect is pretty obscure; it's called “Proofreading Woman.” It's a song by the Rockbottom Remainders, which was a rock group formed by novelists and writers, featuring, among others, Stephen King, Amy Tan, and, the singer of this song, Dave Barry. You can find a few performances of it on Youtube, and while this one is the best, none of the recordings are really great. 

I discovered this song years ago when I was on a Dave Barry kick. Like Barry himself, the song's cheesy, and meant as a joke. It is also one of the best love songs out there. It addresses traits and characteristics beyond those love songs usually address. 

Love songs tend to be either abstract or focus on how beautiful a woman is, and sometimes, they're flattering.

Then there’s the song for which I have substantial derision: Bruno Mars' “Just The Way You Are.” It sounds like it's a good, positive, affectionate song about how, with all of a woman's beauties and flaws, she's still someone important to the singer of the song. In Bruno Mars' song, he sings about:

Her eyes
Her hair
How beautiful she is
How he compliments her beauty
How she asks if she looks okay.
How he feels when he sees her face.
Her smile
Her lips (and how he would kiss them all day if she'd let him)
Her laugh (which is sexy)
How he'd never ask her to change
How she's perfect

Mars' song is, first of all, about a hot girl with a sexy laugh who may be a little bashful, but is still preoccupied with her appearance. The line about how he'd kiss her lips all day “if she'd let me” always strikes me as creepy and suggestive in all the wrong ways.

“Just the way you are” is a woefully superficial song and suggests the woman is too. There is no commentary on her skills, abilities, talents, or intelligence. She could be a doctor. She could have a debilitating drug habit. She might know all of Shakespeare's work by heart. The only words she recognizes may be her own name. We have no idea. Bruno doesn't tell us. It just doesn't seem like he cares. On the one hand, this makes the song marketable and popular because it operates under two popular assumptions: women care about being beautiful and women want to be told they're beautiful.

I'm not going to say there's anything wrong with being beautiful or complementing a woman's beauty, but a man whose main preoccupation is on whether or not he's with a hot chick isn't a man worth being with.

Hence my immense appreciation for “Proofreading Woman.”

The very first lines riff on the very heart of these other love songs:

Some men like a woman with a beautiful body,
Some men like a woman with a pretty face,

Nice body, nice face? We've heard that before. The difference here is the song sets up the expectation of a reversal. The next lines are:

But I like a woman with a big vocabulary, And every single little comma in place. I'm in love (he's in love) with a proofreading woman!

She's intelligent and possess a skill.

She fixes up plays, She fixes up novels, She fixes up books full of poetry,

She's accomplished professionally and in a variety of ways. Different genres require different proofreading skills, and she's well versed in several genres.

Just as how Bruno left us not knowing how talented or capable the woman is, Dave Barry lets us know this is a competent, intelligent woman with a specific skill set she uses professionally. With no lyrics to give any idea as to what she looks like. There’s no hint, no inclination. But her beauty doesn’t matter. If it did matter, it would be in the song. The song is more preoccupied about the kind of woman she is, not the kind of woman she looks like.

She even gets a voice. In a situation involving another man. She gets to speak for herself. In part of the song Barry sings 

A handsome man fell in love with my woman.
He tried to take her away from me.
He said, “Hey baby, I'd like to really know ya.”

In each recording that I've heard, the music pauses here, and a woman, I believe it's Amy Tan, responds,

“Frankly, I'm not attracted to men who split their infinitives.”

He probably doesn't even know what split infinitives are. The point, though, is not only is this woman worth serenading because of her intellect , but she has the opportunity to speak for herself. She's not just an object to be desired, nor one to be defended or held back, she can speak for herself.

On the other hand, how many women want be serenaded about what wonderful proofreaders they are? The song has limited appeal, and, given that it was written and performed by a bunch of professional writers and not musicians, it can be hard to give it great critical fanfare from music connoisseurs. If nothing else, though, it's worth stopping and thinking about the songs and poems and what it is they celebrate. Do they celebrate a significant other's skills, talents, intelligence, capabilities? Or how beautiful they are?

Ask yourself just how skin-deep do the love songs and poems you enjoy go?

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Works Cited

Barry, Dave. "Dave Barry Sings 'Proofreading Woman'." YouTube. Google inc., 24 Apr 2010. Web. 9 Feb. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jMJ0k2tSxE>.

Mars, Bruno. "Bruno Mars - Just The Way You Are [OFFICIAL VIDEO]." Youtube. Google inc., 8 Sep. 2010. Web. 9 Feb 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjhCEhWiKXk>

Simple Symbols of Love

Ah, February. a short month punctuated with varying shades of red and pink hearts; bare-bottomed, infantile archers; and a continuation of the winter holidays binge eating. There’s still plenty of sugar to go around.

And poetry, lots of poetry.

Poetry and literature about love is as common as carbon, so... why not do a few romantic poems these four weeks of February.

Love is a difficult thing to represent or describe, which is why we have a proliferation of certain colors, shapes, and pictures to represent it. We use these colors and images to try to shape and define this abstract concept. Love is so profound, and yet so common, we use these images because they symbolize something significant.

Imagery and symbolism, like lovers, go hand in hand. It's possible to have one without the other, but you usually find them in tandem. Sometimes we see symbolism as trying to dig out the author’s deeper meaning behind symbols and images, and we expect symbolism to be deep, profound, and elusive. Not all symbolism has to be so elusive, though. Sometimes, it’s as simple as the symbols of love.

The poem I want to discuss is one of these simple ones. It appears in anthologies and classrooms. I don't think there's anything deeper or more profound in it than its being a love song. Edmund Waller’s “Song” or, as it is more commonly known, “Go Lovely Rose.”

This poem is special to me. I don't have any great romantic attachments to it, but it makes for a beautiful song, and I sang it in my high school choir. It's simple, sweet without being saccharine, and invokes simple, beautiful imagery of a single, impermanent, significant rose.

Roses are simple, delicate, beautiful, and when the speaker of the poem says, “Tell her...when I resemble her to thee,/How sweet and fair she seems to be” (2-5) the speaker addresses the rose and tells the rose to tell the woman he is wooing how he compares the rose to her. The poet relies on the symbolism of the rose, and yet, tries to imbue it with his own symbolism. Roses are common in Western culture as a ubiquitous symbol for love. Giving a person a rose will send a very different message than sending them columbines or poppies, because there's something delicate and romantic in a single rose.

What the speaker of the poem is trying to do is take the collective, societal symbolism of the rose and individualize it – personalize it. He does this by addressing the rose itself about its own symbolism, but he adds to it in the process. He suggests the rose's beauty would have been “uncommended” (10) had it bloomed in a desert. He suggests beauty is beauty whether it is recognized or not. For the speaker, the rose isn't just a beautiful flower symbolic of love because convention says so. He encourages this added symbol of the barren desert as a way to encourage her to “suffer herself to be desired,/And blush not so to be admired” (14-15). The speaker isn’t content to accept the rose as a symbol in and of itself, but mingles the symbolism of the rose with the image, and thereby the symbolism, of the desert to make it as unique as his love.

He then reminds us, and the rose, that the rose will die, regardless of whether it bloomed in a desert or not. There’s a departure from the romantic. Roses don’t symbolize death, and love poems don’t usually end on a note of “and we’ll die some day.” He doesn’t forget that he’s dealing with a plant that lives and dies and not just emotions and abstract symbols. He knows the rose won’t last long, a fine detail vendors don’t mention, but he’s not going to shirk from the truth, and is going to use it to his advantage. In short, to say they should take advantage of “how small a part of time they share” (19).

The speaker takes the rose, relies on the rose’s traditional symbolism, and develops upon that symbolism to make it his own. Which is what we do with love.

Romantic love has kept writers of every sort employed for centuries, each one wringing some new significance, form, model, or moral from it in order to delve deeper into this ubiquitous emotion. I mean, Nicholas Sparks has published 17 novels, and the rose has remained a symbol of love for centuries. Edmund Waller wasn't doing anything new here but his piece does say something about the nature of love and our relationship with it: we try to make it personal.

In a culture where people can build careers on the serialization of romance, and yet, it's something abstract. We can't put our finger on it, and its different for everyone. So the speaker of this piece finds himself in a plight not unlike that of most every person who has fallen in love. He has so many ways to convey this love, but he wants to do something unique.

It isn't just a poem about a man wooing a woman nor is it just about how roses are symbolic of romantic love. It's about how we take these symbols of love and breath new life, new love, into them.

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Works Cited

Waller, Edmund. "Go Lovely Rose." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 7 Feb. 2015. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180684>.

Waller, Edmund. "Song." The Norton Introduction to Literature. 11th ed. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. W.W. Norton, 2013. 1006-7. Print.