How to Analyze Setting in Literature

Setting plays as much of an important role in literature as characters or plot. Setting, which includes scenery, time period and moral or intellectual environment, creates the stage on which characters move and act. Why an author chooses a particular setting for her novel, poem or play tells a great deal about her literary intent. Therefore analyzing the setting in a piece of literature can produce a lot of information about its themes.

Instructions

1. Read the text. Take notes of the settings and how they are presented. Also pay close attention to how each setting is described and how the description relates to the piece or the context under which it is presented.

2. Examine the use of language and literary tropes. Determine the author's intent in using certain words or tropes to describe the settings. For instance, a war-torn country might be compared to a thorny flower. The atmosphere at an ivy-league college is described as being "self-contained and claustrophobic." Analyze what these descriptions say about the settings and/or the characters who inhabit them.

3. Determine how the settings reflect the plot. For instance, in a story or play that takes place in a war-torn country, the plot might center around a family struggling to survive in a dangerous place. Examine how the setting(s) affect the plot or how it might push the plot forward.

4. Analyze any imagery that is related to the setting in the text. Focus on what is repeated in the story or poem, such as a child's shoe buried beneath the rubble of a collapsed building. Examine the author's intent in presenting this image and extrapolate what it might mean. For instance, the author might be commenting on the true costs of war.

5. Analyze the time period and atmosphere of the story or poem. For instance, how does time period reflect its general atmosphere. A story that takes place in the 1950s is going to reflect specific attitudes, places, or things that will differ from other time periods. Examine how that is reflected in the tone and/or characters in the piece.

6. Analyze how descriptions of setting based on the author's use of language and imagery define the story or the poem's theme or meaning. The description of a war-torn country as a thorny flower and the image of a child's shoe suggest a thematic emphasis on beauty and innocence and death and destruction.

References

• Amarillo College: Setting and Meaning