Unit 4 · Topic 4.3

4.3 Setting, mood and a character's surroundings

Setting can create mood, the feeling a passage gives the reader, and it can echo or contrast with what a character is going through. The places characters live in and move through also tell you about them. You learn to connect details of place, weather and surroundings to a character's situation.

Key terms

setting
mood
atmosphere
symbolic setting
imagery

Mood and atmosphere

Mood is the feeling a passage creates in the reader: dread, peace, excitement, gloom. Atmosphere is the overall feeling of a place in the story. Writers build both through setting details: light and dark, weather, sounds, colors, the state of buildings.

Mood is not the same as tone. Tone is the narrator's attitude (see 4.6). Mood is the reader's emotional experience. A narrator can describe a gloomy scene in a calm, flat tone, and the gap between the two can be revealing.

Setting that mirrors or contrasts

Sometimes setting matches a character's inner state: a storm during an argument, fog when a character is confused. Sometimes it pointedly doesn't: bright sunshine at a funeral, a cheerful party next to a tragedy. When the setting contrasts with what a character feels, ask why the writer created that gap.

In Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" (1894), a woman who has just heard of her husband's death looks out her window and sees "the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life." Springtime freshness is not what you'd expect at a moment of grief, and it hints at the feeling of freedom that is about to rise in her.

Surroundings as characterization

The environment a character lives in gives information about them. A spotless, silent house, a cluttered workshop, a cramped room in a big city: each tells you about money, habits, values or state of mind. Look at what the character has chosen and what has been forced on them.

What does the space look, sound and smell like?
Does the character fit the space, or seem out of place?
Has the character shaped this space, or has the space shaped them?

Symbolic setting, briefly

Some settings take on symbolic weight, standing for an idea beyond themselves: a locked garden for innocence, a crossroads for a choice. You'll do more with symbolic settings in Unit 7. For now, notice when a setting detail keeps returning or seems to carry more weight than its literal role.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Setting that creates mood
Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) opens: "During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher." How does Poe use setting to create mood?
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: List the setting details: autumn, a dull, dark, silent day, low clouds, dreary land, evening coming on, a "melancholy" house.
2. Step 2: Notice the patterns. Everything is sinking or ending: the year (autumn), the day (evening), the clouds (low). Even the sounds are missing ("soundless").
3. Step 3: Look at word choice. "Oppressively" makes the sky feel like a weight. "Melancholy" gives the house a human sadness.
4. Step 4: Notice the sentence itself. It's long and slow, delaying the house until the very end, which builds dread.
Answer: Model paragraph: Poe builds a mood of heavy dread before anything has happened. Every detail of the setting is sinking toward an end: it is "autumn," the "evening" is drawing on, and the clouds hang "oppressively low," as if the sky itself were pressing down on the narrator. The day is "dull, dark, and soundless," so even the absence of sound adds to the sense of something deadened. Poe saves the house for the end of a long, slow sentence and calls it "melancholy," giving the building a human sadness. Because the reader has been led through such a lifeless landscape, the House of Usher seems to be the source of the gloom, and we approach it already uneasy.

Common mistakes

Mixing up mood (the reader's feeling) and tone (the narrator's attitude).
Describing the setting without connecting it to a character or an effect.
Assuming setting always matches a character's feelings. Contrasts can be just as meaningful.

On the exam

Multiple-choice questions often ask about the "atmosphere" of a passage or what a description of a place "suggests" about a character. Look at the descriptive words.
In the prose essay, setting details work well as evidence for claims about a character's emotional state.

Connected topics

Videos

AP English Literature: How to Talk About Setting in the Literary Analysis Essay
Marco LearningWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
"What is the Difference Between Tone and Mood?": A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers
OSU School of Writing, Literature and FilmWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Setting in Literature Explained
Jon CowanWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Understanding Tone and Mood
Melissa AdamsWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Check yourself

4 questions on 4.3 Setting, mood and a character's surroundings. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

“Jose, come here.” Laura caught hold of her sister’s sleeve and dragged her through the kitchen to the other side of the green baize door. There she paused and leaned against it. “Jose!” she said, horrified, “however are we going to stop everything?”

“Stop everything, Laura!” cried Jose in astonishment. “What do you mean?”

“Stop the garden-party, of course.” Why did Jose pretend?

But Jose was still more amazed. “Stop the garden-party? My dear Laura, don’t be so absurd. Of course we can’t do anything of the kind. Nobody expects us to. Don’t be so extravagant.”

“But we can’t possibly have a garden-party with a man dead just outside the front gate.”

That really was extravagant, for the little cottages were in a lane to themselves at the very bottom of a steep rise that led up to the house. A broad road ran between. True, they were far too near. They were the greatest possible eyesore, and they had no right to be in that neighbourhood at all. They were little mean dwellings painted a chocolate brown. In the garden patches there was nothing but cabbage stalks, sick hens and tomato cans. The very smoke coming out of their chimneys was poverty-stricken. Little rags and shreds of smoke, so unlike the great silvery plumes that uncurled from the Sheridans’ chimneys. Washerwomen lived in the lane and sweeps and a cobbler, and a man whose house-front was studded all over with minute bird-cages. Children swarmed. When the Sheridans were little they were forbidden to set foot there because of the revolting language and of what they might catch. But since they were grown up, Laura and Laurie on their prowls sometimes walked through. It was disgusting and sordid. They came out with a shudder. But still one must go everywhere; one must see everything. So through they went.

“And just think of what the band would sound like to that poor woman,” said Laura.

“Oh, Laura!” Jose began to be seriously annoyed. “If you’re going to stop a band playing every time some one has an accident, you’ll lead a very strenuous life. I’m every bit as sorry about it as you. I feel just as sympathetic.” Her eyes hardened. She looked at her sister just as she used to when they were little and fighting together. “You won’t bring a drunken workman back to life by being sentimental,” she said softly.

“Drunk! Who said he was drunk?” Laura turned furiously on Jose. She said, just as they had used to say on those occasions, “I’m going straight up to tell mother.”

“Do, dear,” cooed Jose.

“Mother, can I come into your room?” Laura turned the big glass door-knob.

“Of course, child. Why, what’s the matter? What’s given you such a colour?” And Mrs. Sheridan turned round from her dressing-table. She was trying on a new hat.

“Mother, a man’s been killed,” began Laura.

“Not in the garden?” interrupted her mother.

“No, no!”

“Oh, what a fright you gave me!” Mrs. Sheridan sighed with relief, and took off the big hat and held it on her knees.

“But listen, mother,” said Laura. Breathless, half-choking, she told the dreadful story. “Of course, we can’t have our party, can we?” she pleaded. “The band and everybody arriving. They’d hear us, mother; they’re nearly neighbours!”

To Laura’s astonishment her mother behaved just like Jose; it was harder to bear because she seemed amused. She refused to take Laura seriously.

“But, my dear child, use your common sense. It’s only by accident we’ve heard of it. If some one had died there normally—and I can’t understand how they keep alive in those poky little holes—we should still be having our party, shouldn’t we?”

Laura had to say “yes” to that, but she felt it was all wrong. She sat down on her mother’s sofa and pinched the cushion frill.

“Mother, isn’t it terribly heartless of us?” she asked.

“Darling!” Mrs. Sheridan got up and came over to her, carrying the hat. Before Laura could stop her she had popped it on. “My child!” said her mother, “the hat is yours. It’s made for you. It’s much too young for me. I have never seen you look such a picture. Look at yourself!” And she held up her hand-mirror.

“But, mother,” Laura began again. She couldn’t look at herself; she turned aside.

Katherine Mansfield, “The Garden Party” (1922), from The Garden Party, and Other Stories (1922)

Question 1 of 4

The contrast between the cottages' “Little rags and shreds of smoke” and “the great silvery plumes” from the Sheridans' chimneys (paragraph 6) mainly emphasizes

Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word:

“He is in Melbourne now.”

She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. Of course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.

“Miss Hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting?”

“Look lively, Miss Hill, please.”

She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.

But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married—she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father’s violence. She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl; but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother’s sake. And now she had nobody to protect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages—seven shillings—and Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn’t going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad of a Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday’s dinner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work—a hard life—but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.

James Joyce, “Eveline,” from Dubliners (1914)

Question 2 of 4

The details of the room in paragraph 1 (the dust, the “yellowing photograph” and the “broken harmonium”) mainly suggest

Question 3 of 4

Eveline has never learned the name of the priest in the photograph, though her father always says “He is in Melbourne now” (paragraphs 1–2). This detail chiefly suggests

Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o’clock. There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above the sky-line and dip immediately from view.

But all this—the mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all—made no impression on the man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a new-comer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man’s frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man’s place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head.

As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below—how much colder he did not know. But the temperature did not matter. He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys were already. They had come over across the divide from the Indian Creek country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of getting out logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would be in to camp by six o’clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would be ready. As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protruding bundle under his jacket. It was also under his shirt, wrapped up in a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin. It was the only way to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to himself as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon.

At the man’s heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolf-dog, grey-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for travelling. Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, than seventy below. It was seventy-five below zero. Since the freezing-point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and seven degrees of frost obtained. The dog did not know anything about thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was no sharp consciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in the man’s brain. But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at the man’s heels, and that made it question eagerly every unwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air.

Jack London, “To Build a Fire” (1908), from Lost Face (1910)

Question 4 of 4

The details in paragraph 1 (“no sun nor hint of sun,” an “intangible pall” and “a subtle gloom”) create a mood that is best described as

0 of 4 answered