From valley low to mountain high and everything in between : the function and significance of setting in eight short stories in English by North American writers

From Valley Low to Mountain High and Everything in Between:\nThe Function and Significance of Setting in Eight Short Stories in English by North American Writers\nby Ragnhild Steinulvsdatter Stuler\n\nThis thesis is about the significance of setting in short stories by eight North American authors. The chosen stories represent a span in both time and place, both when it comes to the writing of the stories and their actual contents. The decision to discuss eight stories is merely practical. It allows me to point to several uses of setting at the same time as it is possible to go deeper into the stories than if I had had many more stories. My selection of authors includes American and Canadian writers: Sinclair Ross, Sharon Butala, Alice Munro, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, Carol Shields, Annie Proulx and Shay Youngblood. \n What constitutes the red thread between these eight stories, beyond being by authors from the same geographical and linguistic area, is that their setting is important in regards to the characters relationships with each other and the way they communicate amongst themselves. All stories are in one way or the other about couples struggling to communicate what they feel. This inability to communicate meaningfully can be caused by society, the characters various background or by forces inside them. \n Any event must have a cause and a setting. It cannot happen nowhere, at no time and because of nothing. Throughout this thesis, I look at how time and place contribute to a specific atmosphere in the stories, as well as how time and place together make up the social circumstances with which the characters have to live. As opposed to a dramatist who creates dialogs in scenes with visual props, a short story writer must create his own scenery in words in order to make a descriptive framework. Authors utilize space and time to portray wider concerns such as a character s mind. Time and place is not only illustrated by a writer s vivid descriptions of landscape and remaining scenery, he can also state spatial and temporal markers in the text. \n The description of setting in a literary work can be compared with the presentations of scenes in a movie or theatrical piece. In short stories, compared to for instance novels, the author has little space to create a framework for the characters to live and experience in, and he can seldom spend much time on telling the reader about their history or their present situation. Setting can therefore function as a sort of shorthand for information that the writer cannot, or will not, afford to lend space to. \n In the first chapter, I base my research around Margaret Atwood s idea that all Canadian literature essentially is about survival. Although physical survival is an important aspect of stories from the Canadian wilderness, my chosen stories are in addition about emotional survival and social defeat. The stories I discuss in this chapter are The Painted Door, Gabriel and Vandals. In Chapter 2, I look at how setting can be used to supply the readers with background information. Landscape is valuable to the authors, used as a sort of shorthand for the background to the relationship. The stories Hills Like White Elephants, Gazebo and Milk Bread Beer Ice are all about failing or failed relationships. In the third chapter, I look at how time and place together make up specific environments. The chapter explores how social circumstances create a hostile setting for people in same-sex relationships. The stories in question are Brokeback Mountain and Funny Women. The concept of homosexuality is always context-related, and its reception will differ from time to time and place to place. \n My guiding question in this thesis is what is the significance of setting in these eight stories? In answering the question, I aim to capture the reasons why authors sometimes use so much space on setting in fairly short narratives. My tentative answer is that setting not only helps the writer establish a specific atmosphere or mood in a short story, but that it also serves as a symbol for characters conflicts, problems, inner feelings and opinions.

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