AP® English Literature and Composition review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/lit/units/3/3-3)
Unit 3 · Topic 3.3
3.3 Setting as a social, cultural and historical world
In a novel or play, setting is more than a time and a place. It's also the world around the characters: their social class, customs, beliefs and moment in history. You learn to explain how that world puts pressure on characters and shapes what they want and what they're allowed to do.
Key terms
- setting
- social context
- cultural context
- historical context
- values
Setting as a whole society
In Unit 1 you looked at setting as time and place. Longer works give writers room for more: the social, cultural and historical situation the characters live in. That includes:
- Social class and money: who is rich, who is poor and how people move (or can't move) between them.
- Customs and rules: what's polite, what's shameful, what's expected of men, women, children or servants.
- Beliefs and values: religion, ideas about family, honor or success.
- Historical moment: a war, an economic boom, a period of social change.
How the world presses on characters
Characters don't make choices in empty space. A woman in a society where women can't own property has fewer options than a man in the same house. A young man in a town where all the good jobs are gone has reasons to leave. The pressure of the setting often explains a character's motives, conflicts and limits.
When you analyze, avoid turning setting into a background paragraph. Link it directly to a character's choice: because of this world, the character does this, and the work shows us this.
Reading the clues
Novels rarely give you a history lesson. Instead, they show the social world through details:
- How characters speak to people above or below them.
- What characters own, wear and eat.
- Who is allowed into which rooms, parties or neighborhoods.
- What characters worry others will think.
Use context, but don't let it take over
Knowing something about the real history behind a work can help. But the exam is about the text in front of you. Bring in outside knowledge only when it sharpens your reading of a specific detail, and keep the focus on what the work does with that world.
Characters who fit and characters who don't
One of the clearest ways to read a social setting is to look for a character who doesn't fit it: an outsider, a newcomer, someone who breaks the rules or someone who rises or falls in class. Their friction with the world around them makes the world's rules visible. When everyone else accepts a custom without thinking, the one character who questions it shows you that the custom is a choice, not a law of nature.
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
A setting that shows a social divide
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925) is set in 1922 on Long Island and in New York City, among very wealthy people. Between the rich suburbs and the city lies this place: "This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air." How does this setting reveal the social world of the novel?
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Identify the place: a dumping ground between the rich areas and the city. The rich drive through it; others live in it.
- Step 2: Look at the comparison. It's described as a "farm" where "ashes grow like wheat." Farms should produce life; this one produces waste.
- Step 3: Look at the people. They are "ash-grey men," "crumbling," moving "dimly." The setting has turned them into part of the landscape.
- Step 4: Connect to the social world: the wealth of the novel's rich characters depends on a world of waste and poorly paid labor that they rarely look at.
Answer: Model paragraph: Fitzgerald uses the valley of ashes to show the cost hidden underneath the wealth of the novel's world. He describes it as "a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat," a bitter twist on the image of a farm, since this land produces nothing but the waste of the rich towns around it. The people who live there seem to be made of the same waste: they are "ash-grey men" who are "already crumbling," as if the place has used them up. Set between the mansions of Long Island and the glamour of New York, the valley is a place the wealthy characters pass through rather than look at. The setting makes clear that the glittering life of the 1920s rests on people the rich would rather not see.
Common mistakes
- Writing a paragraph of historical background without connecting it to the text. Every point about context must lead to a detail in the work.
- Treating setting as only physical. Class, customs and beliefs are part of the setting too.
- Assuming every character in the same setting feels its pressure the same way. Compare how different characters respond.
On the exam
- In multiple-choice questions on drama or novel excerpts, watch for how characters of different classes or roles speak to each other. Those details reveal the social setting.
- Situating your interpretation in a broader context, like a society's values, can help you earn the sophistication point, as long as it's specific and tied to evidence.
Connected topics
Videos
Check yourself
4 questions on 3.3 Setting as a social, cultural and historical world. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House (1879), Act III, translated by R. Farquharson Sharp (1910)
Helmer's protest “And you don’t consider what people will say!” (paragraph 25) and Nora's admission that “most people would think you right” (paragraph 34) mainly show that
Susan Glaspell, Trifles (first performed 1916), from Plays (1920)
The Sheriff's remark “Nothing here but kitchen things” (paragraph 2) reflects an assumption that
Hale's comment that “women are used to worrying over trifles” (paragraph 9), followed by the stage direction that the women “move a little closer together” (paragraph 10), suggests that
Which of the following best describes how the passage uses the kitchen setting?
0 of 4 answered