The Influences and Impacts of Settings on Characters and Readers

Every story has a setting. Whether it is in this world or one that is completely imaginary, the setting of any story is necessary in order to understand the characters. The characters in the following three short stories are shaped by their setting and would not be the same if the setting was different. Over the course of each story it is easy to see how vital the setting is in order for the reader to fully understand the characters and their lives. Therefore, while the reader reads these stories they must analyze how the setting affects the characters, the obstacles that the setting creates, and what it tells us about the characters.

Many literary works can be compared due to vast amounts of similarities between theme and characters; Hamlet and the Lion King are two literary works in which character and theme are surprisingly similar throughout each work. The Lion King is thought to be just an animated children’s film, however, it is in fact a modern translation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The main characters in the Lion King are definite parallels to those in Hamlet. Along with the main characters and plot details, the stories were similar in the representation of the secondary characters. "Here's my little secret, I killed Mufasa.” The theme in Hamlet can be compared to the Walt Disney movie The Lion King. Hamlet and Simba are betrayed by their uncles whom murder their

• Do the settings make the stories believable or credible? How does setting impact the plot of the story, and how would the plot be affected if the story took place in another setting?

Initially, Rios illustrates a young boy perplexed by a new-found maturity. As the maturation from childhood to adolescence begins, he is facing unfamiliar feelings about the opposite sex. An example of this is

Setting is the specific or general environment where a story or event takes place. This novel is set in the 1960s in a town divided by the East and West sides. The division in the city separates characters based on social class, creating unequal treatment between gangs as characters of the West Side believe in superiority over the East. The small rivalry between classes leads to much larger problems, forming events, such as the Socs jumping Ponyboy and Johnny, that lead to the main plot of the book.

Discuss how language is used to describe the settings in texts, and explore how the settings shape the events and influence the mood of the narrative

Three specific examples of how setting influenced the actions and attitudes of the characters are: The isolation from a civilized world, the mysteries of an unfamiliar place, and different social types being forced to live with one another. How these examples are to be proven will be developed in the following paragraphs.

The setting includes place and time. Louise Erdrich’s A Wedge of Shade and A Reptile gives details about different locations and times that collaborate with the characters and stories. The settings describe numerous vivid scenes throughout the story that makes the reader visualize what the protagonists are going through and helps to deliver the desired message. Settings can also be identified as symbols for important ideas. Ideas help transmit the desired message to the reader.

Similarly to all short stories and narratives, a setting plays a significant role. In this case, the context

As children grow up in a dysfunctional family, they experience trauma and pain from their parent’s actions, words, and attitudes. With this trauma experienced, they grew up changed; different from other children. The parent’s behavior affects them and whether they like it or not, sometimes it can influence them, and they can react against it or can repeat it. In Junot Díaz’s “Fiesta, 1980”, is presented this theme of the dysfunctional family. The author presents a story of an adolescent Latin boy called Junior, who narrates the chronicles of his dysfunctional family, a family of immigrants from the Dominican Republic driving to a party in the Bronx, New York City. “Papi had been with

The main setting of the story is the river, an arroyo. It illustrates their childhood, the place that never changes. It was their secret place where they could do whatever they wanted to do. “It was our river, though, our personal Mississippi, our friend from long back, and it was full of stories” (59). Additionally, they come in contact with a grinding ball. It represents their soon to be lost childhood. In realizing this, they decide to bury it hoping to preserve it and their childhood memories.

Continuing in the theme of conformity; if the boys are united by their heteronomy, Cuellar’s castration, in contrast, is the source of his ostracism. His unfortunate accident is a wound that ‘time opens instead of closes’, and as the story progresses, Vargas Llosa juxtaposes the boys socially inclusive youthful pastimes of football and studying mentioned earlier in the novel with his comparatively solitary penchant for the ocean and surfing “a puro pecho o con colchón” (94) in chapter five. In this passage, his distance from the others is symbolised by the isolation of the sea; the narrator says the water “se lo tragó” (95) and later, the boys state that “se perdió” (96). Clearly, Cuellar’s failure to partake in the testosterone fuelled rituals of sexual maturity in the city has seen him shunned from the rest of the boys and resigned to hanging out with “rosquetes, cafichos y pichicateros” (96) instead – the modern, metropolitan outcasts. Evidently, Cuellar is incapacitated by this highly heteronormative lifestyle, as the inherent masculinity of the city is a fixed identity that will perpetually exclude him, or anyone else who cannot fulfil Peruvian societies idea of gender appropriate behaviour.

Contrasting places have been used in many works of literature throughout history to strengthen the meaning of stories. The use of two different settings within one story often represents opposed forces or ideas, and allows readers to get a better grasp of the meaning behind the

In 1994, the critics hail an animated masterpiece, not only for its artwork and music, but also for the plotline: an evil uncle displaces the heir to the throne and sends him into exile. Years later, following both a prophecy and an encounter with the ghost of the old king, the heir is persuaded to return to his home, avenge his father's death, and take his proper place as the ruler of the kingdom. At first glance, Disney's The Lion King has all the classic motifs of the revenge plot. These archetypal patterns occur in many stories, and Disney writers Jim Capoblanco and Irene Mecchi may well have built the plot's structure from the ground up. However, if we disregard the Serengeti setting, the

Explain how the setting helped to show the author / creator’s idea(s), supporting your points with visual and / or oral language features.