Transcript Setting: Where is your story built on?

Chapter 4:
Setting
Where is your story built on?
By:
Veronica Quevedo
Alfredo Sanchez
Lu Ting Ting
• Elements of Setting:
• Place: Physical environment of a story
• Locale: The location where a story takes place
• Time: Hour, year, or century
• Weather: In some stories the weather is crucial; climate
• Atmosphere: Dominant mood or feeling that pervades all or parts of a
story.
• Language
• Images
• Physical setting
• Historical Fiction: Where the
story is set in another time and place
• Regionalism: Physical place is important. Story is set in one
geographical area.
• Naturalism:
Writer observes known characters and sees them as a
products and victims of the environment and heredity.
Kate Chopin
• Born on February 8, 1850 in St. Louis ( On Sept. 2009, Library
of Congress accepted the corrected date)
• Our textbook says born 1851
• Married Oscar Chopin at the age of 19; had 6 children
• Dedicated more time to writing after her husband died
• She is an example of a regional writer. Why?
• Setting of stories based on one geographical region
• Louisiana.
• She was among 1st American authors to write truthfully about:
• Women’s hidden lives
• Women’s sexuality
• Goal:
• Describe the world as she knew it during the 19th century
“The Storm” & other work
• Bobinot and his son, Bibi, are forced to stay at Friedheimer’s store
due to the storm. Meanwhile, wife Calixta is home zoomed out on
her sewing machine that she did not realize a storm was on its way.
Alcee, who happened to be nearby asked if he could shelter on her
gallery until the storm passed. The unexpected happened. Calixta and
Alcee had an affair. Once the storm was over Alcee left. Bobinot and
son returned home and Calixta welcomed them very cheerful.
• “Setting: “The Storm”
• Time: 19th century
• Place: Calixta and Bobinot’s house & Friedheimer’s store in Louisiana
• Weather: rain storm
• Her novel ”The Awakening” received harsh criticism .
• Following this literary scandal of “The Awakening”, she was unable to
publish further work.
Virginia Woolf
• Born on January 25, 1882 in London, England.
• Grew up in a family where one person or another was in the writing
area.
• She is known for her great novels
• Virginia had a sister named Vanessa and two other brothers named
Thoby and Adrian.
• Her mother died in 1895 at the age of 49 making Vanessa at the age
of 16 be the mother of her brothers and especially Virginia.
• A few years after her father in 1904 died, causing Virginia to have a
nervous breakdown that affected her whole life.
• Married Leonard Woolf in 1912 who was also a writer.
• Suffered many mental breakdowns after the death of the father
leading her to depression.
• March 28, 1941 she drowned herself near Rodmell, Sussex.
Novels/Essays
• The novel “A Haunted House” is a novel where 2 ghosts come back
to their home to look for the treasure that they had left behind. The
ghosts would go through every door in the house talking about
special moments that they had. The treasure that they were looking
for was not involving any goods, but remembering the good times,
the love, and the memories that they had at the house together.
They did not go to the house to cause harm to anyone, but to make
the others know that the treasure that they should be looking for is
with someone that really care about them.
• Other novels that Virginia had written in her times are: The Voyager
Out (1915), Night and Day (1919), Jakob's Room (1922), Mrs.
Dolloway (1925), To The Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931).
Also publishing a book named “A Room of Ones Own (1929).
• She completed her last novel “Between the Acts (1941).
• Over her lifetime, She published over 500 essays and 10 novels.
Amy Tan
• Amy Tan is known for her lyrically written tales of emotional conflict between Chinese
American mothers and daughters separated by generational and cultural differences.
Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California. Her family lived in several communities in
Northern California before settling in Santa Clara. Both of her parents were Chinese
immigrants. her father and older brother both died from brain tumors. she married to
Louis DeMattei, an attorney. They were later to settle in San Francisco.
• Tan majored in English at San Jose State university, in California. in the early 1970s
rather than fulfill her mother's expectations of becoming a surgeon. After graduate
work at the University of California, Berkeley, she began a career as a technical writer.
When Tan started write stories and had one published, Tan's mother fell ill. Amy Tan
promised herself that if her mother recovered, she would take her to China, to see
the daughter who had been left behind almost forty years before. Mrs. Tan regained
her health and mother and daughter departed for China in 1987. The trip was a
revelation for Tan. It gave her a new perspective on her often-difficult relationship
with her mother, and inspired her to complete the book The Joy Luck Club.
• After 2003, the last book she published, which disclosed she had Lyme disease, a
chronic bacterial infection contracted from the bite of a common tick. she now
spends much of her energy raising awareness of Lyme disease, promoting its early
detection and treatment, and advocating for the rights of Lyme disease patients.
Amy Tan’s work
• Her first story Endgame, won her admission to the Squaw Valley writer's
workshop taught by novelist Oakley Hall. The story appeared in FM,
literary magazine, and was reprinted in Seventeen.
• The Joy Luck Club is inspired by her trip with her mother went to China.
It published in 1989, and won enthusiastic reviews and spent eight
months on The New York Times bestseller list. The book has been
translated into 17 languages, including Chinese.
• The Kitchen God's Wife is inspired by her mother Daisy early life in
China. Daisy had divorced an abusive husband but lost custody of her
three daughters. She was forced to leave them behind when she
escaped on the last boat to leave Shanghai before the Communist
takeover in 1949.
• Amy Tan has published two books for children, The Moon Lady and The
Sagwa.
• three novels The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), The Bonesetter's
Daughter (2001) and Saving Fish from Drowning (2005).
• In 2003, she published The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings, an
autobiography in which she disclosed her experience with Lyme disease,
a chronic bacterial infection contracted from the bite of a common tick.
Questions:
• Kate Chopin:
•
•
What is Kate Chopin’s motive for writing this story?
How is the plot of the story dependent on setting of the story?
• Viriginia Woolf:
•
•
What was one of the main reasons that Virginia started to suffer of mental
breakdowns and depression?
Why do you consider the contact of the ghost and the character in the story
mean?
• Amy Tan:
•
•
Amy tan write two books based on her mother, what they are? The A Pair of
Tickets is related to which book? The setting in A Pair of Tickets related her
mother’s story in war is belonging to which book? How she describe the war?
In A Pair of Tickets, the narrator and her father spent a day in Guangzhou. What
is the real experience she had in life to generate this story? How she describes
Guangzhou? What she is using for contrast？Can you describe this city through
your view?
Wrap up:
• Chapter four covered the concept of Setting. The
elements of setting are time, place, atmosphere,
and weather. We also learned about regionalism
such as the author Kate Chopin who is known as
a regional writer for setting her stories in one
geographical area. We covered naturalism and
historical fiction as well. The short stories’ from
the authors Kate Chopin, Virginia Woolf, and
Amy Tan are perfect examples of how setting is
crucial in a story.
Works Cited
• Kate Chopin
"Kate Chopin: Her Novels and Stories." Kate Chopin: The Awakening, The Storm, Stories, Biography. Kate Chopin
International Society, 17 Feb. 2012. Web. 23 Feb. 2012. <http://www.katechopin.org/>.
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. "Setting." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Boston:
Longman, 2010. 105-11. Print.
• Virginia Woolf
Class book
Www.literaturecollection.com/a/virginia-woolf/
Www.biography.com/people/virginia-woolf-9536773
• Amy Tan
"Amy Tan Biography." -- Academy of Achievement. Web. 23 Feb. 2012.
<http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/tan0bio-1>.
"Amy Tan: Overview." Web. 23 Feb. 2012. <http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/tan.html
>.