The setting is considered to be one of the fundamental elements of fiction. Along with character, plot, theme, and style setting influences the general assumption that the reader gets from this or that work. The term “setting” overlaps the time, the location, and the circumstances in which the action takes place. The setting serves as the backdrop for the story told and influences its general tone. Sometimes setting is called the mood of the story. This mood is rendered by the author to his or her reader.
In some cases, setting refers to the context (for example, physical, social, economic conditions) beyond the immediate surroundings of the story. Some features of the story are to be present for it to be told. It means that this or that story cannot happen in some other place or during some other time. The most essential features affect the course of the events described and contribute to the reader’s understanding of them.
In the present work, we will analyze the impacts of the setting of the concrete literary works, namely, we will study how the setting affects the stories written by Jacqueline Woodson, that is, Locomotion, and by Neil Gaiman, that is, Stardust.
Starting with Stardust by Gaiman, we should say that this is a fairy tale about the boy named Tristan Thom who throws himself on strange, frightening, but entertaining, and amusing adventures for the benefit of the beloved. The power of love makes the boy wandering through the Realm of Faerie which creates a general magic atmosphere of the book.
Stardust begins in a small English town called Wall. The place where the action runs deserves much attention of the reader and serves as a means of creating the fabulous atmosphere of the story described. While describing the Wall the author admits that the town has a long history and that nothing has changed there up to the present moment: “the Wall stands today as it has stood for six hundreds years” (Gaiman, 2007, p.6). This statement suggests to the reader that something crucial is about to happen, something that might change the routine history of the town, thus making him or she anticipate some bright and stormy events. The following objects of the town get the author’s description: the houses, the roads, the inhabitants, and the main one after which the town was called, the wall. We get to know about the houses that they are “square and old, built of grey stone, with dark slate roofs and high chimneys; taking advantage of every inch of space on the rock, the houses lean into each other, are built one on the next, with, here and there, a bush of tree growing out of the side of a building” (Gaiman, 2007, p.6). At first sight, the description may not seem a significant one, but if considered closer, it is regarded as an integral part of the general picture that the author draws for his reader. The houses strike with their dullness and seeming resistance to get some new insight. The author implies that some fairy should change the present situation and this fairy is about to start.
The description of the road that leads to Wall presented by the author aims at emphasizing the uniqueness of the town. The road is the only available one; it separates the town from London: a whole night’s drive and you in the heart of the British civilization. The road is the borderline between the ordinary civilized life and the one that is covered with a mystery. We are inclined to believe that “… a winding track rising sharply up from the forest, where it is lined with rocks and small stones” (Gaiman, 2007, p.6) symbolizes the town’s inexplicable power to fill the inhabitants’ lives with some unpredictable events that may become a starting point for their renewed existence.
When the author talks about the town, he pays special attention to the description of its inhabitants. Gaiman divides them into two types: the native Wall-Folk that reminds the author of the basis of their houses, and the others, “who have made Wall their home over the years, and their descendents” (Gaiman, 2007, p.7).
One more “inhabitant” of the town is an old rock to its east, after which the town was called. There is a small opening in the wall which leads to the magical world of Faerie. “… two townsmen stand on either side of the opening night and day, taking eight-hour shift … Their main function is to prevent the town’s children from going through the opening, into the meadow and beyond. ” (Gaiman, 2007, p.7). This fact stresses the importance of the wall for the town.
The elements of the description of the story’s place are not restricted to the ones we have got from the first pages of the book. There are plenty of picturesque descriptions of the Realm of Faerie where the action moves to.
We consider this Faerie land to be a separate element of the setting. As it was mentioned above, the setting may be regarded as the mood of the story. The magical world of Faerie is the best creator of this mood in Stardust. Faerie is composed of “each land that has been forced off the map by explorers and the brave going out and proving it wasn’t there” (Gaiman, 2007, p.70), therefore, it unites the features of many mythic creatures and objects which cannot but fascinate the reader. Most of the fairy novel takes place in the kingdom of Stormhold named for a fortress carved from Mount Huon. The power of the fortress that it has on the readers resembles the power of the Wall that it has on the local inhabitants. These all help the author to create the fairy-tale atmosphere that the reader should feel while discovering the mysteries together with the main character Tristran Thorn.
The time of the novel is also of much importance. The story begins in late April 1839 when “Mr. Charles Dickens was serializing his novel Oliver Twist; Mr. Draper has just taken a photograph of the Moon” (Gaiman, 2007, p.7). The majority of the Stardust takes place several years later, in October 1856. The timetable is significant for the characters of the story, as only once every nine years the leisurely pace in Wall is disrupted and magic enters the town. The author’s skillful combination of the spirit of the dawn of the Victorian era and the one of the fairy tale is one of the main keys to the book’s success.
In the novel in a free verse Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson, the setting also serves as the author’s tool to render the message implied. This is the life story of the eleven-year-old Lonnie Motion who needs to adjust to numerous changes in his life. A series of poems that the boy presents to the public is his way to remember the past, record his grief, and cope with his future. Eventually, this is poetry that helps the main character to accept his new life and to appreciate the people around him.
Time has special importance in Lonnie’s life. It is divided into parts that are so different one from another. The tough breaks in Lonnie’s life made it full of grief because of the loss of the near and dear people and the infrequent meetings with the sister. The age of seven has left its stamp on the whole life of the boy and the age of eleven has become a springboard for a new period in his life. The boy will remember these two dates all his life long and will share his feelings about them in his poetry.
We should admit the fact that Lonnie’s story is not told in chronological order, the story flows by the sequence in which the memories come to the boy. But the timeline of the main character, starting with Lonnie’s birth and going up to the fifth grade, can be easily restored from his poems.
The action of the novel takes place in the present days what contributes to the realism of the events described. The reader realizes the possibility of the events and places oneself in the shoes of the main character. This helps to feel the boy’s grief inside out and sympathize if not help him in the present situation.
As for the place where the action takes place, it is in the Bedford Stuyvesant and Park Slope sections of Brooklyn, New York. Jacqueline Woodson confessed that she wrote the novel in the same park. This also contributed to the novel’s sound realistic.
We also believe that additional details used by the author while describing the boy’s feelings serve as integral parts of the overall settings of the story. For example, the boy’s mother’s favorite song, “Locomotion” explains the nature of Lonnie’s name. The honeysuckle talc powder that Lonnie tries to find in the drugstore is a reminiscence of his mother. The boy writes about it and feels as if his mother were still alive.
Though the setting is used by the author to render the tragic feelings of the character, it is also a successful means to convince the reader of the positive changes that will happen once in the boy’s life. The laws of life prove that the rot is sure to be replaced by the godsends that will make one’s existence happier. The reality of the setting that Jacqueline Woodson resorted to in her Locomotion proves this truth once more.
So, from the analysis, we have done above it comes out that the influence of setting on the story is significant. The setting creates the framework within which the author gets one’s plans implemented. On the one hand, the setting is a sort of restriction for the author, but, on the other, it is his or her faithful assistant in his or her creation of work.
In conclusion, we may say that the more successfully the setting is used in this or that author’s work the more chances this work has to win the approval of the audience. The novels we have analyzed above are brilliant examples of this interrelation.
Works Cited
- Gaiman, Neil. Stardust. Vertigo, 2007.
- Woodson, Jacqueline. Locomotion. Putnam Juvenile, 2003.