This document provides an overview of setting in fiction. It defines setting as the place and time where a story takes place. Key elements of setting include locale, weather, historical period, season, time of day, and social environment. The author notes that writers use setting to set the mood and suggest an atmosphere for events in the story. Setting can parallel characters and their situations, contrast with characters, or be in direct conflict with characters. The document provides several examples from works of fiction to illustrate these different ways setting can relate to characters.

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The Elements of Fiction
Setting
Bruce Clary, McPherson College, McPherson, Kansas

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“Nothing happens nowhere. A scene that seems to
happen nowhere seems not to happen at all.”
—Jerome Stern

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Setting
Setting is the place and time of a story. To set the
scene and suggest a mood or atmosphere for a
story’s events, writers create the illusion of a solid
world in which the plot unfolds.

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Setting includes
• Locale (in all its sensuous aspects)
• Weather
• Historical period
• Season
• Time of day
• Span of time and pace of its passing
• Social environment (manners, mores, values)

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Our interest in setting is the author’s use of the
pool of images provided by setting to comment on
character and their actions.

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Setting can
Parallel characters, their actions, and their
situations—that is, be in harmony with them,
signifying their situation to them and to readers

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Setting that parallels character
“… half decayed veranda… near the edge of a
ravine…. a long field that had been seeded for
clover but that had produced only a dense crop of
yellow mustard weeds…the public highway along
which went a wagon filled with berry pickers.… a
cloud of dust floated across the face of the
departing sun.”
—Anderson, “Hands”

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Also consider
• Opening paragraphs of “Eveline”
• The closing scenes of “Shiloh”
• The final scene of “The Things They Carried”
• The final scene of “Everything That Rises Must
Converge”

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Setting can
Contrast with characters, their actions and their
situations

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Setting that serves as contrast
“The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny,
with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the
flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass
was richly green.…in the square, between the post
office and the bank…it could begin at ten o’clock
in the morning and still be through in time to allow
the villagers to get home for noon dinner.”
—Jackson, “The Lottery”

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Also consider
• The final image of the illumined portholes in
“Eveline”
• The calm and quiet of the morning that Ted
Lavender is killed in “The Things They Carried”
• The subdivisions overtaking Leroy Moffit’s
hometown in “Shiloh”

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Setting can
Be in conflict with characters via a direct encounter
with nature and the elements or as a concrete
representation of social and cultural forces aligned
against a character’s desires

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Setting in conflict with characters
• Near Salem, site of 1692 witchcraft trials
• Set in 1960, height of Cold War
• Flourescent lighting, check-board tile
• “the cat-and-dog-food-breakfast-cereal-
macaroni-rice-raisins-seasonings-spreads-
spaghetti-soft-drinks-crackers-and cookies aisle”
• Populated with “sheep” and “houseslaves”
• Managed by “gray...stiff” Lengel

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Also consider
• The house in “The Rocking-Horse Winner”
• The fifth paragraph of “Everything That Rises
Must Converge”
• The dust and dullness of the Hill house, along
with the portrait of the priest and the “coloured
print of the promises made to the Blessed
Margaret Mary Alacoque” in Joyce’s “Eveline.”