Setting in Fiction

Setting is where a story take place.

It can include the historical period, what the room looks like, or the town, or the outdoor environment. It is not static, but a living breathing quality of literature.

Questions to ask:

• Does the reader need to know this?
• What does it contribute to the story?
• How does the writer make the setting essential to the action and the meaning of the story?

Setting Examples from two works of fiction. 

Notice the two different styles, and apply this to your reading for this week, in your reading response.

1. Maximalist Setting

Includes: Overflowing abundance of information and detail. Can seem gratuitous and excessive or richly evocative.

Work of fiction: Grand Ambition, novel by Lisa Michaels

Topic: Married couple Glen and Bessie embark on the first ever 1928 rapids boat trip down the Grand Canyon

“[Bessie] sat n the bare box springs in the center of the boat, while Glen stood on a cross plank, working the long sweeps. They were plowing through a caramel river—thick, with a greasy sheen. It ran flat and smooth to the banks, which were bare and just high enough to block the views on either side. A deep ditch, really. A canal. Within it, the boat looked rather substantial: a flat-bottomed barge the size of a peddler’s wagon, piled with supplies. A box stove, a .30-30 rifle, two cartons of bullets, crates of canned peaches and tomatoes and beans, rope and blankets. Bessie kept her things wrapped in oilskin: a box camera, twenty-seven dollars in a beaded purse—a sentimental object, frivolous for any occasion ahead—pencils, charcoal, a sketchbook, and blank diary.”

Details:

• The river is greasy.
• Practicality contrasts with frivolous purse.
• Some items just useful enough to make them plausible without sentimental.
• Every sentence provides key information.
• The river, boat, and objects in the boat are almost characters too.
• The river is antagonist, the boat is a protector.

2. Minimalist Setting

Includes: Just enough detail to give an impression.

Work of fiction: “Thailand” short story from the book “Thailand” by Haruki Murakami, 2000

“Together, they passed through Bangkok’s vulgar, noisy, polluted streets. The traffic crawled along, people cursed each other, and the sound of car horns tore through the atmosphere like an air-raid siren. Plus, there were elephants lumbering down the street—and not just one or two of them. What were elephants doing in a city like this? she asked Nimit.

‘Their owners bring them from the country,’ he explained. ‘They used to use them for logging, but there was not enough work for them to survive that way. They brought their animals to the city to make money doing tricks for tourists. Now there are far too many elephants here, and that makes things very difficult for the city people. Sometimes an elephant will panic and run amok. Just the other day, a great many automobiles were damaged that way. The police try to put a stop to it, of course, but they cannot confiscate the elephants from their keepers. There would be no place to put them if they did, and the cost of feeding them would be enormous. All they can do is leave them alone.’”

What Murakami does:

• Only three sentences of description, and short ones.
• Just enough to give an impression of the daily chaos of the streets and to introduce elephants so the character Nimit can tell us about their history.
• Images of elephants resonates with themes of displacement, loneliness, and loss that runs through the story.
• Description and details play a minor role.
• Fable: meaning is conveyed almost entirely through action and dialogue.

When setting works well:

Character’s attitudes are as important as detail, and are intertwined.

Tone can equal a feeling in a good setting.

Desire and longing can be shown in the descriptive details.

Open Season

My mother’s hand the last morning as I sit alone with her—

already gone, though forehead still warm, petunias

outside the window, orange pink, bruised

as those on the narrow path once outside our home.

Light clings like mud to her flaking skin,

revealing fine cuts near her mouth,

“like paper,” they said as if clearing it with us

a technical problem that could be solved somehow.

Threads of hair I brush off her face,

dark flooded eyes ignore all warnings,

mouth once an open smile now hollow cheeks

fashioning a skull, despite how she knew everything.

I cannot understand how this brain interruption

can happen— where is the dividing line—

her childhood, the past

her adulthood, the past

old age, the past. Her eyes

coals over an open fire

warmed—

what she carries within

now fills this room.

Form

My mother recited the ventricles of the heart,

anatomy learned in undergrad biology

sitting in her wheelchair—

lay alone all those nights

room shared with a screaming woman

imposed structure not suitable.

How is my own survival now different than hers

also at the mercy of those unsuited to their professions

like coyotes they stumble in a stink

guiding their charges across a desert.

In the nursing home, her diaper waiting half an hour for the R.A.

where chair, bed, lights, even air flow were determined,

TV cocked at an angle for a woman

who would never have one in her own bedroom,

who would hum to the classical station.

Her brain exploded,

ribbon torn—

and my mother, who loved form—

how could she form words,

electrical impulses bleating

in what was left of her brain.

Yet letters on a page, her handwriting was almost perfect

years of calligraphy instilled.

Survival is studied by scientists

but goes beyond adjustment, speed,

and adrenaline,

beyond fitting pegs in holes.

Saying Goodbye to Al Hackett

The memorial for family friend Al Hackett this past Saturday, December 3rd, took place at the Church by the Side of the Road in Berkeley. As I sat in the row behind the Hackett kids and their mother Dorothy, I thought about how the event was meant for the family. Winston and Marty were tearful. Of course, for me, it brings back memories of losing my father (Sol Benjamin) suddenly in December 1999. And more recently, last year, my Mother, Thelma. So when I weep, it is not only for Al, but the loss of my parents.

Al was as much the fabric of my childhood as my father. They came from different places. Al from Texas, my father from Brooklyn, Al’s father a slave and my father’s father escaping the pogroms as a Russian Jew. When they came of age as young men, they fought for our country-- Al overseas in the Buffalo Soldiers, my father as an aircraft engineer stationed in North Carolina. And because of the war and the G.I. Bill, they both ended up in college, part of their moral compass, Al as a teacher, my father a social worker. Because there was such a thing as a moral compass then, as much as lapels, hats, sport jackets, and pipes—the fabric of men in our society at the time.

Growing up in a multi-cultural neighborhood as I did in Richmond in the 1960s was my normal. The street my family lived on -- Castilla Avenue-- was separated by an alleyway to the street where the Hackett family lived. l spent so much time in that house, as I did with other friends on those blocks, typical for that time. No play dates, just running into each other’s houses. But now I see that neighborhood as a unique environment. People of different ethnicities and origins. Dorothy Hackett pointed out the other day that both blue collar and white collar professions shared the neighborhood, as she alluded to diversity as much as people coming together to build a community. Al and Dorothy and my parents were dedicated to a world their own parents had survived, where they fought for freedoms.

Today, I see the Hacketts fairly regularly. I have always felt comfortable and at home with them. They are my family. At the memorial, what struck me was that other people echoed that feeling. Their family too.

Dear Al, I have been mourning your death, even as I know that at the end you were in discomfort, that you outlived your body and mind, not able to finally speak. You finally passed, the day after receiving your eldest daughter Tish who had come from Michigan to see you. You waited until after your 62nd wedding anniversary. I remember your 50th in 2005, and how you sang to Dorothy in your beautiful tenor voice. And that's how I think of you— at home, playing the piano and singing a jazz standard. Gentle, human, warm, funny, a long-winded story-teller. Your smile welcoming me into your home, saying "Hi, sweet." 

Birth

Mom and Me at my MFA graduation, 2006

On what authority do you leave

this world? This is not my first

experience of death, but a rectangular frame

for my entire life. I cannot

flourish without song, burning

wildly. I weep and I wait.

The precipice that placed you in this

world and me in this afterlife

eases through a vein, while

a sparrow sings in his striped

garment, full of early light.

Different than the owl,

cloaked in a suit of darkness,

green and brown, surprised

for the love of one person.

Both witness loss of breath.

Having borne me, you did not

leave the past behind—

you delved into family history,

discovered cousins, cozied

their feathers in your house.

It rained the first Passover

after Dad died, and I stormed out,

walked the well-knit paths

leading me from one area

to the next. We could not

agree on the niceties—oven temp,

amounts of food—almost like mourning

except we did not talk about

if Dad were still here. And now,

approaching Passover after your death,

I have no one to disagree with,

no one to stand over me

tell me to serve more soup,

clear the bowls,

serve the chicken.

The last fires will eventually

bow, but for now I cannot

raise my arms, numb.

And seeing “Swan Lake,”

music of my childhood, intimate as

your warm generous arms

and dark eyes. On stage

Hungarian costumes dance to

a whimsical beat, and the swans

identical white-clad,

mirrored and multiplied,

move in patterns,

then arms and legs

lay one over the other, long thin ends

at rest. With each tune, I return

to what placed me in this world,

what birthed me and sustained me.

No, there is no easing

through, no light—

only dusk. And pointed toes

carry the swans,

floating above the stage,

feathered white hair-pieces snugly in place,

white tutus flowing as

they mourn being turned from humans,

their lives permanently changed.

Branches Reaching

England, 1955

Ushers wearing white gowns part before the round stage,

brightly lit, ready for take off

glowing like a white snail on the trail of Mount Tam,

curved black line opening out against pearl.

Ravi Shankar sits in the center, Sitar resonating,

waves of sound a hand motioning.

Internal orange, oak tree branches, a brain

making a turn and then another, and

then follow with inner eye, elbows, then

cauliflower leaves emerging.

My mother is examined by Dr. Ravishankar

a woman in her early thirties

who speaks loudly

says you won’t be able to live alone

people have to watch her.

My mother hasn’t slept in two days

since found on her bathroom floor

incoherent, left side bruised

and flacid. And now, like a smudge on a mirror

she is seen as an old woman

the tree with its many branches

reaching incrementally.

Oak outside the hospital

a fifty year old brain against the sky

with roots that tip under a circular pathway.

Branches, metranomic fingers, grow,

pulse regular, blood circulating

late summer leaves a grey green.

The clot waited for this moment

after years of observation from a high balcony seat

opera glasses afloat, absorbing the drama.

Waited until now.

After Passover

Take away the knife

dishes at Passover washed

from the table, like the rocks

we placed on my father’s grave

when we lowered my mother in the ground.

Don’t expect a speech, throat

curled in on inappropriate flowers, throated

tight in someone’s hand, knife-

cut down the hill, not here, the ground

sacred according to the Rabbi, washed

like her body the day she died, grave

waiting without her wedding ring, no rock

but a ten dollar gold band from Brooklyn. Gone the rocking

chair at her father’s third floor walkup and throat

of lace her mother left behind, engraved

before my mother held a knife,

before she moved to London, washed

her hair in a sink when the Underground

stopped working. Maternal lineage grounded

her, the shore of Bremerhaven where a rock

broke open and her parents boarded a ship, washed

away from their deaths. But her own throated

words—what did they carry at the end? A knife

dropped at a dining table, grave

waiting? She knew, saying gravely

she couldn’t go on, leaning in a wheelchair, grounded

all day like a miscreant, no knife,

only fork and spoon, left hand rocking

back and forth, trying to clear her throat

to avoid choking, pureed food washed

in a blender. Before it came to this, she washed

her own hair for the last time, gravely,

the morning the clot throated

her brain. Stoppage of opera, grounded

from reading, where Elizabeth Bennet throws a rock

at her competitor. All the mail, I now open with a knife

though my throat sinks to the ground,

mud-washed in a dirty grave.

I throw rocks, brain open with a knife.