STORIES OF SETTING
“Setting consists of the circumstances, material and immaterial, in which the characters are seen to move in the story. Its elements are time, place, occupations, and (I lack a more expressive word) conditions.”[24]
To be classified properly as a story of setting, a narrative must be more than merely rich in local-color—as the characteristic environment of a certain district, as set forth in fiction, is often called. The true story of setting is one in which the setting has a vital bearing on the natures or the destinies of the characters. To be sure, the setting of a story, like the staging of a play, has an important part in the realistic presentation of the scene, but setting assumes a predominating part when it actually moves the characters to certain deciding actions, as do the snow-storm in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” and the soft light of the moon in “Moonlight.”
The local-color story is one which could not have been set elsewhere without vitally changing, that is to say destroying, the story. For example, Balzac’s “The Unknown Masterpiece” is set almost entirely in an artist’s studio. The story would be slain by dragging it away from that atmosphere. But it is also a story of setting, because, whatever internal influences also affected the characters, the setting influences their destinies—the men and the women live lives as determined by their surroundings. “Mateo Falcone,” too, is a story of setting, but not primarily so; for while it could have happened only in Corsica, and the local-color is singularly vivid, it is primarily a story of human motive and action.
Because of the powerful effect of environment upon character—in fiction just as in real life—the reader often judges of coming events by the feeling of the setting. The stage manager knows this, too, and accompanies, or even forecasts, a moral crisis by having lights, music, sounds, and other stage accessories harmonize with the mood of the actors. Or, contrariwise, the tone of the piece may best be brought out by a setting in contrast.
Observe how in the two stories illustrating this type the authors never draw pictures of costumes and scenery just for the sake of description, as beginners might do. The setting, to Harte and Maupassant, is vitally a part of the story, and any unnecessary detail would mar the harmony of the whole. Too much were worse than too little.
“When the characters live, move, and have their being in the setting, the result is ‘atmosphere.’ Atmosphere is thus an effect. It is felt, not seen. Through its medium the reader must see all the action, yes, all the details of the story. Atmosphere gives value to the tones of fiction as in real life it does to landscape. The hills are actually the same in cloud and in sunshine, but the eye sees them as different through the mediate atmosphere. And so setting and characters, perfectly adjusted, make the reader, that is to say the beholder, see the story in the very tones the literary artist desires. A story of the sea has an atmosphere of its own, but the atmosphere does not consist merely of the accurately colored picture of sea and strand and sailor and ship and sky. The whole story is informed with the spirit of the sea—its tang clings to the garments, its winds breathe through every passage, its wonderful lights and glooms tone the whole story. Without it the story would be a poor thing, bloodless and inert.”[25]