Setting and symbolism

Slide presentation about setting and symbolism for ENG 2000

1. Setting and Symbolism

2. Setting
Context of the story
Time (time of day, time of year, time in
history)
Place (climate, geographical place,
physical space)
Social environment (the culture)

3. Setting
Understanding the setting is crucial to
understanding the meaning of the story
For example, we need to know that socially
and legally a wife would be subordinate to
her husband and dependent on him, with a
divorce considered a disgrace and difficult
to obtain in order to fully understand the
wife’s feelings in “The Hand”

4. Setting
Settings can help to create a mood for
the story and can have symbolic value.
For example in a short story by
Raymond Carver about a couple whose
marriage is collapsing, the chosen
setting is a winter day as darkness is
falling and the dirty snow is melting into
rain

5. Setting
In “Miss Brill” descriptions of the setting
help to convey Miss Brill’s exuberant
feelings as she goes to the park and
also warn of a possible shift in mood.
“brilliantly fine—the blue sky powdered with
gold.” “The air was motionless. . . But
there was just a faint chill”

6. Symbolism
A symbol is anything that suggests a range of
meanings in addition to its literal meaning. All
of the following could be symbols
Person
Event
Word
Action
Setting

7. Conventional symbols
A conventional symbol gets its meaning
within a specific cultural context
White symbolizes purity or innocence in
Western culture
White symbolizes death in many Asian
cultures
A bird can be a symbol of freedom, a ring a
symbol of marriage, a rose a symbol of
love etc.

8. Literary symbols
Writers of literature frequently use
conventional symbols, but they may
also use symbols that take on
meanings only within their own story.
For example in The Glass Menagerie a
little glass unicorn comes to symbolize
one of the main characters in the story.

9. The Hand--setting
Setting is physically in the bedroom,
which is appropriate for a story about
marriage and newlyweds
The room is decorated in a fanciful way.
The light fixtures for example are a conch
shell and a purple parasol
This may symbolize the fairy-tale aspect of
her whirlwind romance.

10. Setting continued
The room is half-lit. (The bride does not
see clearly.) Briefly when a car goes by
its headlight fill the room with light, just
at the moment when her husband
appears potentially monstrous to her.
This creates the suggestion that the
wife is seeing a different reality that had
been hidden from her.

11. Setting continued
Everything in the setting is new—just as
she has embarked on a new chapter in
her life.
The curtains are blue in contrast to the
pink ones in her childhood bedroom.
She’s left childhood behind but only
recently.

12. Symbols in “The Hand”
The hand seems to symbolize the husband’s
power and strength. Although he treats her
gently and lovingly, she realizes that she has
put herself in his power and theoretically he
could harm her.
The descriptions in which his hand is
compared to animals seem to symbolize her
fears that he could become a kind of beast or
monster

13. Symbols continued
The pink varnish seems to symbolize a
smooth attractive exterior, which she saw
during the courtship but which could mask
less pleasing qualities.
When she examines the hand closely she
detects deformities. When people fall in love,
the loved object seems perfect at first, but in
time we notice flaws.

14. Setting in “Love in L.A.”
Traffic jam below the freeway.
Jake is stalled in life. He values freedom
but is not as free as he thinks he is.
Los Angeles- Hollywood.
Conventionally this is a city of hustlers, of
people who dream of being rich and
famous through show biz. Jake shares
those dreams, but exaggerates when he
claims to be a musician and actor.

15. Setting “Love in L.A.”
The details of the description are
negative: gray concrete, smog. Traffic
is in a “clot.”
For Jake, these negative attributes are
linked to being steadily employed; he
hopes to escape them. But even though he
drives off, he is still in his old car, still stuck
in a confining reality.

16. Some questions related to
symbolism/setting
How can Jake and Mariana’s cars be seen to
symbolize them?
Why is it appropriate that “Miss Brill” takes
place at the start of winter and in the late
afternoon?
How does setting “The Reprimand” as a
phone conversation rather than in the
breakroom with both speakers influence the
encounter?