American Pastoral: Setting 1 key example

Consisting of a thread of flashbacks nestled into flashbacks, the novel lacks a straightforward chronology. As a result, its three parts switch between various settings. Most of Part 1 is set in Newark, but there are also which take place in Old Rimrock, the town of Deal, and in Manhattan. Similarly, Part 2 contains events that take place in the Newark Maid Factory, in the Swede's Old Rimrock home, at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, at Parris Island while the Swede is in the Marine Corps, and in the old and deserted industrial district of Newark, where Merry lives in 1973. Additionally, while Merry tells the story of her life in the years after the bombing, the narrative also moves between Chicago, a commune in Oregon, Idaho, and Miami. The chronology of Part 3 is the most straightforward, in which the main narrative narrative thread follows a dinner party during the summer of the Watergate hearings—in 1973. However, this part also contains a number of wide-ranging flashbacks, which take the reader to various parts of the Swede's earlier life. 

The temporal setting of the novel is the years between World War II and the Watergate hearings. By recreating the progression of the Swede's adult life, Zuckerman captures the gradual breakdown of the postwar optimism and order—a breakdown which reached its peak in 1968. It's worth noting that the year Merry bombed the Old Rimrock general store is considered to be an explosive year in American history. Although the novel also goes back to events before the war and jumps forward to the 1990s, the majority of the narrative takes place between 1945 and 1973.