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Satire
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Part 1, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis:
Like To Kill a Mockingbird, this novel is set in Maycomb, Alabama, a small town that Lee describes in great detail. However, Go Set a Watchman takes place much later than To Kill a Mockingbird; the former is set in the 1960s and the latter in the 1930s. The narrator goes back to the town's inception as Jean Louise arrives on the train in Part 1, Chapter 1, weaving together geography and history:
Home was Maycomb County, a gerrymander some seventy miles long and spreading thirty miles at its widest point, a wilderness dotted with tiny settlements the largest of which was Maycomb...The county and town were named for a Colonel Mason Maycomb, a man whose misplaced self-confidence and overweening willfulness brought confusion and confoundment to all who rode with him in the Creek Indian Wars.
These descriptions reveal the way in which the people of Maycomb structure or characterize the setting. In a small town where everybody knows everybody, people and place are inseparable—going all the way back to the town's founder. In Part 2, Chapter 4,, readers get another example of this:
Maycomb grew and sprawled out from its hub, Sinkfield's Tavern, because Sinkfield made the surveyors drunk one evening, induced them to bring forward their maps and charts, lop off a little here, add a bit there, and adjust the center of the county to meet his requirements.
In the same way that an author does, Lee's characters use stories to paint a portrait of a time or place. Homes have histories, passed down through the generations, and characters have specific spots in which they feel most "at home."
Related Themes:
Part 2, Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis:
Like To Kill a Mockingbird, this novel is set in Maycomb, Alabama, a small town that Lee describes in great detail. However, Go Set a Watchman takes place much later than To Kill a Mockingbird; the former is set in the 1960s and the latter in the 1930s. The narrator goes back to the town's inception as Jean Louise arrives on the train in Part 1, Chapter 1, weaving together geography and history:
Home was Maycomb County, a gerrymander some seventy miles long and spreading thirty miles at its widest point, a wilderness dotted with tiny settlements the largest of which was Maycomb...The county and town were named for a Colonel Mason Maycomb, a man whose misplaced self-confidence and overweening willfulness brought confusion and confoundment to all who rode with him in the Creek Indian Wars.
These descriptions reveal the way in which the people of Maycomb structure or characterize the setting. In a small town where everybody knows everybody, people and place are inseparable—going all the way back to the town's founder. In Part 2, Chapter 4,, readers get another example of this:
Maycomb grew and sprawled out from its hub, Sinkfield's Tavern, because Sinkfield made the surveyors drunk one evening, induced them to bring forward their maps and charts, lop off a little here, add a bit there, and adjust the center of the county to meet his requirements.
In the same way that an author does, Lee's characters use stories to paint a portrait of a time or place. Homes have histories, passed down through the generations, and characters have specific spots in which they feel most "at home."
Related Themes:
