Introduction
Writers employ setting aspects to help them create worlds and establish the limits of the possible and impossible within a story. While both phrases explain elements of a universe, the latter stresses that the world being described is unfamiliar to the reader. Worldbuilding is, therefore, most closely connected with fantasy and science fiction, two genres recognized for their broad, inventive, otherworldly worlds. Location, social milieu, economy, politics, language, dress, and gastronomy are all factors that contribute to worldbuilding. They combine to create detailed, diverse worlds that, while bizarre or unconventional, represent a real degree of depth and complexity.
Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem The Raven utilizes its setting to create a sense of loneliness, isolation, and general dread within the reader. This setting is comprised of a set of established or implied rules and expectations that shape and guide the images within the piece. This paper provides a comparative examination of the setting for The Raven and three other stories, compatible thematically or in terms of setting-related tools. The stories in question are The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Macbeth, and The Fall of the House of Usher.
Role of the Setting
The setting of a book is usually created during the exposition section at the start of the narrative. However, because the setting frequently shifts as the narrative unfolds, a text may offer new settings or expand on an existing one to explain cause and effect. It is made up of three basic elements: location, time, and the universe, all of which work together to provide the tone and backdrop for whatever events are going to take place.
Place refers to large categories like planet and nation, as well as more localized localities like streets, houses, and even rooms. Geographical regions, such as the hemispheres and continents, as well as terrains, such as a snowy mountain range or an arid desert, are all factors in determining where something is located. When a historical event is significant to public understanding, the setting can sometimes be strengthened by specifying the precise Date of the occurrences.
Time, just as much as Date, is an important component of a setting that grounds the narration and helps a reader to better understand their surroundings. It can represent the availability of sunshine and play on popular connections, such as the normal hours of the workday being 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The passage of time, which influences the Date, is a crucial story. Plots evolve throughout time, making them an excellent measure of progress or development. The impression of time can also be influenced by the setting. A metropolis may appear to move quickly, but life in a small country village appears to go more slowly.
The immediate physical and social context in which an event occurs or develops is referred to as the universe. The universe can relate to both immediate and larger social surroundings, such as social groups, communities, cultural and social institutions, and public feelings, beliefs, and crises. It establishes what is generally possible within the world of a story and how far these limits could hypothetically be pushed. Since all of the examined pieces of literature involve supernatural elements, and three can be classified as gothic genre, it is safe to state that the presentation of the universe in them is likely to have similar elements.
The Raven
The poem is set at the nocturnal library in the middle of December, the month of the longest night. The poem’s first few words create an unsettling atmosphere. A sense of gothic terror is added by the unsettling yet dreamy night and tomes of mysterious unspecified knowledge, which many academics understand to signify literature on the occult or black magic. The fact that the tapping wakes up the speaker shows that the room is quiet. The speaker narrates his steadily dwindling fire as the room becomes darker with each “dying ember” (Poe, 773). The mention of ghosts denotes that the flickering embers cast eerie shadows, adding to the eerie ambiance.
Poe could not have chosen a more ominous backdrop; December in the Northern Hemisphere is the harshest and darkest month of the year, with nightfall arriving sooner than at any other time of year. It is a bleak environment metaphorically, too: the early hours of the morning. The scene might have taken place in his chamber, but he’s falling asleep here instead, leading the spectator to assume that he’s up all night for a reason and that something dreadful is about to happen. Given that the fire was dying, the speaker did not appear to care about staying in a well-lit or warm area, placing him in a setting guaranteed to be full of shadows winding themselves around the walls.
The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow
One of the story’s key themes is the battle between country people and city people. Therefore the setting of Sleepy Hollow, New York, is crucial. The inhabitants in the region are Dutch, and they are depicted as down-to-earth rural farmers at various points in the novel. Irving mentions the daughter of a “substantial” Dutch farmer at one point (Irving, 12). In contrast, the protagonist, Ichabod Crane, is a Connecticut outsider with English blood.
Sleepy Hollow is a little valley off the Tarry Town urban area that is fairly remote and surrounded by superstitions. The isolation and obscurity encapsulated by the local surroundings enable the final events of the novel to unravel, with the initial skeptic protagonist being tricked and scared by the local ghost stories. The village itself is isolated, situated near the Hudson River, which Irving meticulously describes in the first chapter of the narrative. The town has a supernatural aura to it, as Irving describes it: “Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power that holds a spell over the minds of the descendants of the original settlers” (Irving, 20). Because it looks like you’re always expecting something frightening to happen, this serves to create the tone for the overall story.
Macbeth
Macbeth is set in Scotland in the 11th century, in what is now the United Kingdom’s northernmost territory. Scotland was a distinct country during the time the play was set. However, its closeness to England resulted in several battles about who would dominate the region. Scotland is frequently gloomy, dismal, and wet due to its far northern position, making it the ideal backdrop for a drama about horrible actions committed in the dark. The Witches inquire if they will meet again “in thunder, lightning, or rain,” (Shakespeare, 1/i., 5) as the performance begins amid a storm, once again demonstrating the presence of isolating weather conditions within the setting. The absence of sunshine in the play’s physical setting mirrors the titular character’s concealment and duplicity.
The majority of Macbeth’s scenes take place either outside, on barren heaths or battlefields, or within, beneath tight castle walls. The play’s grim themes are emphasized by these bleak locations. Moreover, several of the episodes in the play take place at night, such as Duncan’s murder, Banquo’s murder, and the supper scene with Banquo’s ghost. This adds to the ominous mood of evil that pervades the drama. The idea of the wood appears to move on its own, displaying traditional gothic imagery, typical for Edgar Poe’s The Raven.
The Fall of the House of Usher
The environment of The Fall of the House of Usher is crucial to the plot because it creates a mood of desolation, sorrow, and decay. The drama is set in the Usher family house, which is lonely and isolated in the country. The home has grim walls, “vacant eye-like windows,” (Poe & Carlson, 18), and little fungus overspread the complete façade, according to the narrator. With vaulted and fretted ceilings, gloomy drapes draped on the walls, and furniture that is comfortless, old, and torn, the interior of the house is equally bleak. The protagonist Roderick is bothered by the location and believes that the mansion is one of the sources of his neurotic tension.
Throughout the short tale, Poe employs symbolism, which is a literary technique in which an item, person, or concept signifies something else. The Usher mansion is the story’s most essential emblem; secluded, decrepit, and filled with a deathly atmosphere, the home represents the dying Usher family. The house’s fissure is also a significant symbol, further continuing the imagery of downfall and decay. Although it is scarcely apparent to the narrator at first, it indicates a fundamental break or defect in the two personalities of the last living Ushers, foreshadowing the house’s and family’s inevitable downfall.
The Fall of the House of Usher is written from the perspective of an unidentified narrator who, being skeptical and reasonable, refuses to accept that what is occurring around him has supernatural reasons. This approach aligns him with Ichabod Crane but sets him somewhat apart from the nameless protagonist of The Raven. The narrator, and therefore the reader, gets progressively concerned as the tale goes, despite his attempts to convince the reader that Roderick’s uneasiness and anxiousness are only symptoms of his mental agony. Poe intensifies the tension and emotional effect of the story’s finale by presenting it from the perspective of a skeptic rather than a believer.
Conclusion
A story’s setting is one of the five basic aspects that sets the tone, introduces characters and conflicts, and hints at the story’s topic. As a mood-setting tool and the key to a reader’s immersion, setting plays an invaluable role in The Raven and other examined literary works. Gothic literature, to which the majority of the chosen pieces of fiction belong, relies on the use of symbolism and metaphors to strengthen the reader’s immersion. Its gloomy settings create the otherworldliness that differentiates these works from other short stories. Their rich imagery is conveyed to the minds of the readers through the setting, which serves as a background, inspiration, and, to a certain degree, constraint to whatever events are unfolding on the page. To bring it back to the midnight December library of The Raven, it is clear that the mentions of Athena, the dying embers, and the chamber doors paint a picture in which a haunting is more than possible. The setting of this story solidifies the limits, or lack thereof, of what can or cannot happen while a reader is expected to suspend their disbelief.
Works Cited
Irving, Washington. The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow.
Poe, Edgar A, and Eric W. Carlson. The Fall of the House of Usher. Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1971.
Poe, Allan. “The Raven.” Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems. Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 2002. pp.773.
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Penguin Classics, 2015.