Prof. Jessica Penner | OL10 | Spring 2021

Week 10: Setting & Context in Fiction (or any genre)

No word is absolutely wrong or dirty or insulting.
It all depends upon context and intention.
Janet Jackson

Think about a specific word that is considered “wrong or dirty or insulting.”

Imagine someone says this word to you or in your presence.

  • Is there a person/time/place where this word wouldn’t offend you?
  • Is there a person/time/place where this same word would offend you?

Right there, you’re already thinking about setting and context. We’re going to focus on setting and context and how authors do it in fiction.

What do we mean when we talk about setting and context in literature?

First, watch this YouTube Video.

What’s the setting?

Next, look at this picture.

And these pictures.

All the pictures were taken around the same time as the pictures shown on YouTube, so the essential setting (place and time) is the same, but the context (circumstances) for each picture is vastly different.

Consider the chapter from The Water Dancer, which you need to have read by Tuesday, April 6, 2021.

  1. What is the setting? What is one specific clue that helps you decide where/when this novel takes place?
  2. What is the context? What is one specific clue that helps you decide the circumstances the narrator is in?

Answer both of these questions in the comments section of this post by Tuesday, April 6, 2021 (in order to earn participation points).

The comments section’s below–keep scrolling, and you’ll see it!

We’ll be continuing to talk about setting and context over the next few posts, but let’s go to the Assignment page to review the tasks for this week!

13 Comments

  1. Rakib Hassan

    1.
    I assume the story takes place in Virginia, United States, “…when the Virginia earth was still red as brick…”. I also assume this was around this time during the 1800’s because they were using horses as transportation, “I yanked the reins…”.
    2.
    I assume the bridge fell apart, the narrator was being tugged away by the river and drowning. You can tell the bridge fell apart when “The road beneath the wheels disappeared, and the whole of the bridge fell away…”. The speaker was also drowning, “There is no sensation like drowning, because the feeling is not merely agony, but a bewilderment at so alien a circumstance”.

  2. Zhen Deng

    1. The first chapter of The Water Dancer happened in Lockless, Virginia. We learned that in the first paragraph that Hiram grown up in Virginia, where the bridge was located.
    2. The first paragraph of The Water Dancer told readers that, the protagonist has been avoided going through the bridge that his mother used to do water dancing in, and one day when he tried to pass the bridge with his brother, it collapsed. We learned that from the second paragraph that the bridge reminded him the fun time that he had with his family, and from the paragraph 8 & 9 that the Hiram and his brother fell into the water and his brother got lost.

  3. NadreaPT

    1. What is the setting? What is one specific clue that helps you decide where/when this novel takes place? The setting is in Virginia. One specific clue would be that the author mentions Virginia a lot and says, “That afternoon Maynard had scored on a long-shot thoroughbred, and thought this might, at last, win the esteem of Virginia Quality he sought.
    2. What is the context? What is one specific clue that helps you decide the circumstances the narrator is in? I think the context in this text would be that the narrator avoided the bridge at all cost. One specific clue that helps me decide the circumstances the narrator is in is when the narrator says, “I had always avoided that bridge for it was stained with the remembrance of the mothers, uncles, and cousins gone Natchez-way”.

  4. Yasmine

    I think that the setting is around the time after slavery has ended. I took some time for me to figure out the setting and context because I wasn’t sure where things were going but then the writers says “It is autumn now, the season when the races came south” this line gave an idea of what the time period could be as well as the way the character speaks and says certain things. Later on she also says “I can now say that slavery murdered him…” which reassured my assumption that this was when they were no longer slaves anymore.

  5. aaamrin

    1. The setting is in Virginia. One specific clue that helped me figure this out is line 4 in the first paragraph, “back when the Virginia earth was still red as brick…”
    2. The context is that the bridge the narrator was avoiding, he fell into it later. The clue that helped me was in line 1 of paragraph 2 when they said they have always avoided that bridge.

  6. sumayah

    (1) The story takes place in Virginia because in the story it said “Back then when the Virginia earth was still red”…
    (2) When reading, I notice that the narrator started to talk about a bridge that he hates, he describes how much he tried to avoid it at all costs, in the text, it stated ” I always avoided that bridge, for it was stained with the remembrance of the mothers…” he shows how much he hates the bridge.

  7. Aaron Moore

    1. The setting is Lockless, Virginia, as seen by the lines “…back when the Virginia earth was still red as brick…” and “My mother was the best dancer at Lockless…”
    2. The circumstance the character is in is that the carriage they were driving crashed into the river as a result of the apparition they saw. This apparition, specifically of the narrator’s mother, is first described in the third paragraph, and its supernatural nature is alluded to in the line “No one else saw her-“.

  8. Christina C.

    1. The story takes place in Virginia we know this because it is said in the first few lines of the reading. It also says that there is a bridge on a river. The rest of the story takes place in a small town. The time period was around the 1800’s or early 1900’s

    2. The context is that the main character is avoiding this bridge because it holds significant memories for him. He one day tries to cross the bridge and it collapses under him plunging him into the river below.

  9. Zlancaster

    1.The setting of the story is near a bridge important to the narrator in Virginia around the early to mid-1800s (when slavery was still allowed). This is shown by the line “as red a the Virginia earth” and when the narrator Hiram says “slavery made a child of [Maynard]”.

    2.Hiram is taking his master and brother Maynard out for a ride with a “fancy girl” in the back but becomes distracted being close to the bridge where last saw many of his family members causing him to crash. One clue is right before he crashes, all the sounds around him dissapear and he tries to pull the reins but it is too late.

  10. Michelle

    In the chapter From the Water Dancer, the setting is in Virginia on a bridge during the season of autumn. I think it seems to be around the 1800 or 1900 because there is a part where it says “she was patting juba on the bridge, an earthen jar on her head and from what I looked up, it was an African dance mostly performed by slaves. Most around the late 19th century.

    In the chapter from The Water Dancer, “the road beneath the wheels disappeared and the whole of the bridge fell away”. There the bridge collapses and the narrator falls in water and was constantly hears the pleading of help.

  11. Jason

    1. I would take a guess that the setting takes place in early 1800s Virginia or a time where they utilized horses as primary transportation. But it definitely takes place in Virginia because the author writes ” back when the Virginia earth was still red as brick…”
    2. The narrator is in some sort of “slavery” to his brother. He finally cuts ties with his brother after they cross the bridge and it collapses. It was the fact that drowning seemed freeing and that he couldn’t save his brother, even if he tried.

  12. Yves

    1. What is the setting?
    The setting was in Virginia in the United States, because the author mentioned it: “Back when the Virginia earth was
    still red as brick…” It was also stated that that’s where the bridge was located.

    2. What is the context?
    The context here would be that the narrator has memories of family members that made him avoid the bridge. “I had always avoided that bridge for it was
    stained with the remembrance of the mothers, uncles, and cousins gone Natchez-way”.

  13. Eamon Bolger

    1. Right at the beginning we see that the setting takes place in Virginia as the narrator states it within the first few lines, We can also assume that it takes place in the 1700 or 1800s as horse and carriage are still a thing that occurs, which would be outdated in today’s day and age.
    2. The Narrator does not want to go over the bridge as many family members have been sent away going over that bridge. But he decides to overcome that fear of the bridge in hopes of escaping the slavery that he is in under his brother’s command. After going across and falling into the river he can feel the embrace of his freedom through the water and through the fading calls for help from his brother who had him enslaved

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