Setting Matters

Setting plays an important part in storytelling in that the setting of a story is often as a subtle literary device. Instead of blatantly saying that the characters “live in squalor,” you describe their house with “air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers.” To describe setting is to use the writing mantra “show don’t tell.”

The Joyce story “Araby” is interesting because it provides a clear mental picture of the neighborhood, the kids playing in the street, the train, the bazaar. You can see the boy’s disappointment in Joyce’s description of the near empty bazaar, his despair echoed by the darkness. I find this interesting because this same clear description is missing from Joyce’s Ulysses. The biggest problem I’ve found in trying to read Ulysses is that I cannot for the life of me get a mental picture of what is taking place. It all seems disjointed; what I see in my head doesn’t make any sense. The point is that setting allows the reader to follow the story by giving that backdrop, so the reader can see the story in his mind.

“Araby” shows lower class Dublin; or at least makes me recall my vision of Ireland: rows of houses with thatched roofs on a dirty cobblestone street and tiny, dark pubs full of Guinness swilling men who sing “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” and “Oh, Danny Boy” before stumbling home to their overworked wives and hungry kids. Interestingly, I am half Irish, so this is actually a slightly romantic vision to me (except for the overworked wife and hungry kids part).

I’ve gone off on a tangent, but an important one. This tangent was evoked by the setting of “Araby” and Joyce’s descriptions. I could do the same thing with the bazaar, and talk about how it reminds me of the boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ, especially the little amusement park at the north end.