【正文】 A regional writer usually sets his/her stories in one geographic area and tries to bring it alive to readers everywhere. Thomas Hardy, in his portrayal of life in Wessex, wrote regional novels. Arnold Bennett’s novels of the “Five Towns” are markedly regional. Willliam Faulkner, known as a distinguished regional writer, almost always set his novels and stories in his native Mississippi. as an environment, it absorbs some and repels others of the characters: those who are absorbed achieve a somber integration with it, but those who are repelled and rebel suffer disaster.1. The elements making up a settingWhen we have worked our statement of theme, have we cast our statement into general language, not just given a plot summary? Moral inferences drawn from most stories:A regional writer usually sets his/her stories in one geographic area and tries to bring it alive to readers everywhere. Thomas Hardy, in his portrayal of life in Wessex, wrote regional novels. Arnold Bennett’s novels of the “Five Towns” are markedly regional. Willliam Faulkner, known as a distinguished regional writer, almost always set his novels and stories in his native Mississippi. as an environment, it absorbs some and repels others of the characters: those who are absorbed achieve a somber integration with it, but those who are repelled and rebel suffer disaster.1. The elements making up a settingWhen we have worked our statement of theme, have we cast our statement into general language, not just given a plot summary? Moral inferences drawn from most stories:Does the main character in any way change in the story? Does this character arrive at any eventual realization or understanding? Are you left with any realization or understanding after finishing reading the story?What is setting?First, as we have said, the idea of setting includes the physical environment of a story: a region, a landscape, a city, a village, a street, a house—a particular place or a series of places where a story occurs. (Where a story takes place is sometimes called its locale.) Places in fiction not only provide a location for an action or an event of the story but also provoke feelings in us. A sight of a green field dotted with fluttering daffodils affects us very differently from a sight of a dingy alley, a tropical jungle, or a small house crowded with furniture. In addition to a sense of beauty or ugliness, we usually build up certain associations when we put ourselves in such a scene. We are depressed by a dingy alley, not only because it is ugly, but because it may arouse a feeling, perhaps sometimes unconsciously, of poverty, misery, violence, viciousness, and the struggles of human beings who have to live under such conditions. A tropical jungle, for example, in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, might involve a plicated analysis: the pleasure of the colours and forms of vegetation, the disfort of humidity, heat, and insects, a sense of mystery, horror, etc. The popularity of Sir Walter Scott’s “Waverley” novels is due in part to their evocation of a romantic mood of Scotland. The English novelist Graham Greene apparently needed to visit a fresh scene in order to write a fresh novel. His ability to encapsulate the essence of an exotic setting in a single book is exemplified in The Heart of the Matter。Besides place and time, setting may also include the weather, which, indeed, may be crucial in some stories. In some stories, a writer seems to draw a setting mainly to evoke atmosphere. In such a story, setting starts us feeling whatever the storyteller would have us feel. Thus atmosphere is a metaphor for a feeling or an impression which we cannot readily attach to some tangible cause. We say that an old farmhouse set among large maples, on a green lawn, has an atmosphere of peace. Here what we mean is that the house, by reason of the look of quietness and by reason of a number of pleasant associations we have with the kind of life lived there, stirs a certain reaction in us which we do not attach to any single incident or object, but generally to the whole scene. In the same way we may say that the setting of a story contributes to defining its atmosphere. For instance, in “The TellTale Heart,” Poe’s setting the action in an old, dark, lanternlit house greatly contributes to the reader’s sense of unease, and so helps to build the story’s effectiveness. Another example is Lawrence’s “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter,” the description at the beginning of which contributes much to the atmosphere of the story.Does the main character in any way change in the story? Does this character arrive at any eventual realization or understanding? Are you left with any realization or understanding after finishing reading the story?What is setting?First, as we have said, the idea of setting includes the physical environment of a story: a region, a landscape, a city, a village, a street, a house—a particular place or a series of places where a story occurs. (Where a story takes place is sometimes called its locale.) Places in fiction not only provide a location for an action or an event of the story but also provoke feelings in us. A sight of a green field dotted with fluttering daffodils affects us very differently from a sight of a dingy alley, a tropical jungle, or a small house crowded with furniture. In addition to a sense of beauty or ugliness, we usually build up certain associations when we put ourselves in such a scene. We are depressed by a dingy alley, not only because it is ugly, but because it may arouse a feeling, perhaps sometimes unconsciously, of poverty, misery, violence, viciousness, and the struggles of human beings who have to live under such conditions. A tropical jungle, for example, in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, might involve a plicated analysis: the pleasure of the colours and forms of vegetation, the disfort of humidity, heat, and insects, a sense of mystery, horror, etc. The popularity of Sir Walter Sc