【正文】 or period in which the action takes place, for example, the late eighteenth century in history or winter of the year。 P, and Faulkner’s Barn Burning concern the theme of “initiation into maturity.” Such general descriptions of theme can be useful, especially if we want to sort a large number of stories and novels into rough categories, but the fact that they are similar in theme does not mean that they mean the same thing. The attitude towards the theme may be very different: the tone of treatment may be, for example, either ic or tragic, straightforward or ironic. The writer’s vision of life is the special underlying fact of a story, and a theme, abstractly stated, is not the same thing as a vision of life. And we suggest anyway that, in the beginning, you look for whatever truth or insight you think the writer of a story intends to reveal. Try to state a theme in a sentence. By doing so, we will find ourselves looking closely at the story. Kennedy and Gioia make a helpful suggestion to consider the following points when we think about the theme of a story: Look back once more at the title of the story. What does it indicate in relation to the whole 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? Does the author (through the narrator) make any general observations about life or human nature? Do the characters make any (Caution: Characters now and again will utter opinions with which the reader is not necessarily supposed to agree.) Does the story contain any especially curious objects, mysterious flat characters, significant animals, repeated names, special allusions, or whatever, that hint towards meanings larger than such things ordinarily have? In literary stories, such symbols or metaphors may point to central themes. When we have worked our statement of theme, have we cast our statement into general language, not just given a plot summary? Does our statement hold true for the story as a whole, not just part of it? Chapter Four Setting “Once upon a time there lived a king named Midas in Phrygia. He loved gold more than anything else but his little daughter.” This is the opening sentences of “Golden Touch”, which introduces the time, place, and the usual mentality of the character. What is setting? An event occurs and a character exists in a particular time and place. This particular time and place is referred to as setting. A setting is the background against which a character is depicted or an event narrated. Its purpose is to provide an imaginary link between what happens in the novel and what the reader takes to be reality. Like some other elements, setting is not peculiar to the novel. The reader finds it serving the same purpose in different genres. The traditional way to tell a story reveals much about setting. Usually, a setting consists of time and place. It can also mean circumstances such as Midas’s mentality. A setting may be detailed or sketchy. It depends on the novelist’s purpose of writing and his idea of works of art. A setting may or may not be symbolic. Generally, a setting is more concerned with the physical aspects. Setting is closely related with exposition in that they both help to make possible the events in the novel. In fact, an exposition must have a setting. But setting goes along with every event in the novel whereas exposition is only the initiating action. 1. The elements making up a setting By the setting of a story, we simply mean its place and time, the physical, and sometimes spiritual, background against which the action of a narrative takes place. Every a story as short as the one at the beginning of the introduction must be set in a certain place and time: we have an “old, shuttered house” and the present tense suggests time (though the present tense indicates much more than time itself in the story). The elements making up a setting are generally: (1) the actual geographical location, its topography, scenery, and such physical arrangements as the location of the windows and doors in a room。 she loved the place and was loved in the place. The vale, far from the madding crowd of the civilized city, was as serene and pure as the inhabitants. Tess, imbued deeply with the natural hue of the vale and bound closely to this world of simplicity and seclusion, experienced her own delight and happiness though her family was poor. It was, to some extent, her departure from her native place that led to her tragedy. In The Return of the Native, the atmosphere of Egdon Heath prevails over the whole book。 (4) the general environment of the characters, for example, religious, mental, moral, social, and emotional conditions through which characters in the story move. (Holman and Harman, A Handbook to literature, 1986) But often, in an effective story, setting may figure as more than mere background. It can make things happen. It can prompt characters to act, bring them to realizations, or cause them to reveal their innermost natures, as we shall see in John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer”. 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, per