Mood and Setting

Understanding setting

The setting of a text is the place and time used within the text.

This may be:Non-fictional (real) or fictional (made-up)

Understanding setting

A specific geographical location - such as a named city or country.Aa type of place or event - like a school or a wedding.

Setting is a crucial part of a how a text achieves its effect. It can echo the themes of the narrative .

The time of day or year when a text is set adds to its effect:A school at night is a very different place to a school during the day. A ghost story would probably work better at night.

Wider historical context is important too. A text that is set during a war might suggest that the story is big and

important. Or perhaps the story is a small-scale human one, contrasting with the backdrop of war. This could suggest the importance of love or friendship, even when world events are huge and destructive.

How setting is used

In this extract from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, the weather reflects what is happening in Pip’s mind.

“Day after day, a vast heavy veil had been driving over London from the East, and it drove still, as if in the East there were an Eternity of cloud and wind. So furious had been the gusts, that high buildings in town had had the lead stripped off their roofs; and in the country, trees had been torn up, and sails of windmills carried away; and gloomy accounts had come in from the coast, of shipwreck and death. Violent blasts of rain had accompanied these rages of wind, and the day just closed as I sat down to read had been the worst of all.”

Charles Dickens’s, Great Expectations, Ch. 39

How setting is used

In this extract from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, the weather reflects what is happening in Pip’s mind.AnalysisThe gloomy weather reflects the main character’s unhappiness.Pathetic Fallacy techniqueThe description of the gusts of wind and rain shows the action of his thoughts. The violence of these gusts represents Pip’s confusion.