Getting Started
Authors often use more than one setting to tell a story, creating meaning by placing them side-by-side. By analyzing how settings are similar (parallel) or different (contrasting), we can uncover the central conflicts, character motivations, and thematic ideas of a literary work. In your own analytical writing, explaining the function of these relationships between settings will allow you to build a more nuanced and insightful argument about the text’s overall meaning.
What You Should Be Able to Do
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
Identify parallel and contrasting settings within a literary work.
Explain how the relationship between two or more settings reveals insights about characters, conflicts, or themes.
Analyze how an author uses specific descriptive details to establish a setting’s parallel or contrasting function.
Interpret the symbolic meaning created by the juxtaposition of different settings.
Use evidence of contrasting or parallel settings to construct a defensible literary argument.
Close Reading and Interpretation
What It Is
Setting is the time and place in which a story’s events occur. It includes not only the physical location and time period but also the social, cultural, and historical environment that shapes the characters and their actions.
Contrasting settings are two or more locations, time periods, or social environments in a text that are intentionally presented with opposing characteristics. This opposition is used to highlight conflict, expose hypocrisy, or emphasize thematic dichotomies like wealth versus poverty or nature versus civilization.
Parallel settings are two or more settings in a text that share significant similarities. Authors use these parallels to suggest that certain experiences are universal, to connect two different characters or events, or to show that a character cannot escape their past or their own internal nature.
What to Notice
When analyzing the relationship between settings, look for these features:
Direct Comparisons: Does the narrator or a character explicitly point out similarities or differences between two places?
Atmosphere and Mood: How does each setting make you feel? One place might feel safe and peaceful, while another feels threatening and chaotic. The emotional tone a setting evokes is its atmosphere, or mood.
Social Norms and Values: What behaviors are considered acceptable or unacceptable in each setting? A formal, rigid environment might contrast with a free, unstructured one.
Character Behavior: Observe how characters change when they move from one setting to another. Does a character feel powerful in one place and helpless in another?
Sensory Details: Pay attention to the specific sights, sounds, and smells associated with each place. A contrast might be established between a quiet, natural landscape and a noisy, industrial one.
Symbolic Objects: Notice if certain objects appear in both settings, or if the objects in one setting directly oppose those in another. A healthy, blooming garden might contrast with a decaying, neglected one.
How It Builds Meaning
Moving from observation to interpretation is key. An author’s choice to include parallel or contrasting settings is always a deliberate move to create a deeper layer of meaning.
Revealing Internal Conflict: A character who is torn between two choices might move between two settings that physically represent those choices. For example, a character struggling between duty and desire might alternate between a sterile, orderly office and a wild, overgrown forest.
Developing Theme: Contrasting settings often embody the central thematic conflict of a work. A novel that juxtaposes a wealthy, glittering city with a poor, struggling countryside is likely exploring themes of social inequality and justice.
Illustrating Character Change (or Lack Thereof): A character might move to a new city hoping for a fresh start, only to find their new apartment is just as lonely and confining as their old one. These parallel settings suggest the character's problems are internal and cannot be solved by a simple change of scenery.
Creating a Social Critique: By contrasting the opulent homes of the powerful with the squalid living conditions of the working class, an author can critique the social structures that allow such inequality to exist.
Establishing a Dichotomy: A dichotomy is a division between two opposing things. Contrasting settings are the primary way authors establish and explore dichotomies like innocence vs. experience, order vs. chaos, or illusion vs. reality.
Function of Juxtaposition:Juxtaposition is the placement of two different elements side-by-side to create a contrasting effect. When an author describes a peaceful home and then immediately shifts to a violent battlefield, the juxtaposition forces the reader to confront the relationship between the two worlds.
Interaction Note: The way a character chooses to navigate or react to a contrasting setting often reveals their core values and internal conflicts.
Data and Organization Tools
When analyzing multiple settings, a matrix can help you organize details and identify patterns. This tool helps you move systematically from concrete evidence to abstract claims about function and meaning.
Device–Function Matrix
| Setting Feature | What it looks like (Textual Detail) | Effect on Meaning (Function) | Example Phrase for Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|
| The City vs. The Countryside | The city is described with "deafening noise" and "artificial lights," while the country has "whispering winds" and "natural darkness." | This contrast highlights a thematic conflict between the corrupting influence of industrial society and the purity of the natural world. | "The juxtaposition of the city's artificial clamor with the countryside's organic tranquility suggests..." |
| The Upstairs vs. The Downstairs | The upstairs of the house is "bright, airy, and filled with art," while the downstairs is "damp, cramped, and utilitarian." | The contrasting settings symbolize a rigid social hierarchy, representing the division between the wealthy family and their servants. | "By contrasting the opulent upper floor with the grim lower level, the author uses the house's architecture to critique class divisions." |
| The Past vs. The Present | Flashbacks to a "sun-drenched, vibrant childhood home" are set against the "gray, colorless office" of the character's present life. | The contrast between the past and present settings emphasizes the character's sense of loss and disillusionment in adulthood. | "The stark difference between the warm setting of the past and the cold setting of the present illustrates the character's internal decay." |
Textual Evidence and Device Bank
Setting: The time, place, and social context of a narrative. It is an active element that can influence character, plot, and theme.
Juxtaposition: The technique of placing two concepts, characters, ideas, or places near or next to each other so that the reader will compare and contrast them. This device is key to understanding the function of contrasting settings.
Foil: A character or, in this case, a setting that serves to highlight the attributes of another through contrast. A chaotic, dangerous city street can serve as a foil to a calm, safe home, thereby emphasizing the home's quality as a sanctuary.
Symbolism: The use of a setting to represent an abstract idea or concept. A desolate wasteland can symbolize spiritual emptiness, while a thriving garden can symbolize growth and new life.
Atmosphere (or Mood): The emotional environment created by the author's description of the setting. Contrasting atmospheres (e.g., joyful vs. menacing) are powerful tools for signaling thematic shifts or internal conflicts.
Dichotomy: A division into two mutually exclusive, opposed, or contradictory groups. Settings are often used to physically represent abstract dichotomies, such as good and evil, or freedom and confinement.
Motif: A recurring image, idea, or symbol that develops or explains a theme. A recurring type of setting, such as a series of claustrophobic rooms, can be a motif that reinforces a theme of entrapment.
Skill Snapshots
Close Reading
Feature: A novel describes two towns: one is orderly, with straight roads and identical houses; the other is sprawling and chaotic, with winding alleys and unique buildings.
Inference: The contrast between the towns may symbolize a conflict between conformity and individuality.
Feature: In a story, a character's memories of their grandmother's kitchen and their new corporate cafeteria are both described as places with "the scent of burnt coffee" and "the sound of clanking dishes."
Inference: These parallel sensory details suggest that despite the change in location, the character's feeling of impersonal routine and disappointment remains the same.
Feature: A scene of a lavish party inside a mansion is described, but the narrator repeatedly draws attention to the raging blizzard visible through the windows.
Inference: The juxtaposition of the warm, festive interior with the cold, violent exterior suggests the characters' willful ignorance of a dangerous reality just outside their bubble of privilege.
Literary Argument
Claim: The novel uses the contrasting settings of the public, performative royal court and the private, candid forest to argue that true identity can only be found when one is free from social pressure.
Evidence: "While at court the prince is described as 'a statue, cold and perfect,' in the forest he 'shouts, laughs, and gets his hands dirty.'"
Commentary: This dramatic shift in behavior, directly tied to the change in setting, demonstrates that the court demands a false, rigid persona, whereas the natural world of the forest permits an authentic expression of self.
Claim: The parallel settings of the battlefield and the boardroom reveal the author's cynical view that the supposed civility of the corporate world is merely a different form of brutal warfare.
Evidence: "The general 'plots his flanking maneuvers' on a map, while the CEO 'plans his hostile takeover,' both using the language of conquest to describe their strategies."
Commentary: By using the same militaristic vocabulary to describe actions in both settings, the author dissolves the distinction between them, suggesting that the underlying violence and ambition are identical.
Claim: The story’s main settings, a sun-bleached desert and a dark, frozen tundra, function as symbols for the protagonist's two warring parents and her inability to find a moderate emotional space between them.
Evidence: "She recalls her father's 'burning rage' in the 'scorching heat' of their desert home, and her mother's 'icy silence' in the 'unending winter' of her new school."
Commentary: By directly linking the extreme climates of these two contrasting settings to her parents' emotional states, the narrative frames the protagonist's journey as a search for a temperate place, both literally and psychologically.
Common Misconceptions and Clarifications
Misconception: Setting is just the background where the story happens.
Clarification: In sophisticated literature, setting is an active and intentional element. Authors choose and design settings to shape character, drive the plot, and develop thematic arguments. The relationship between two settings is a deliberate choice to create meaning.
Misconception: A contrast must always be between two completely different kinds of places, like a palace and a slum.
Clarification: Contrasts can be much more subtle. An author might contrast two nearly identical suburban houses to show that one is a place of warmth and love while the other is a site of tension and misery. The contrast can also be between the same place at two different points in time.
Misconception: To analyze contrasting settings, you just have to list their differences.
Clarification: Identifying the differences is only the first step. The most important part of the analysis is explaining the function of that contrast. Why did the author put these two places in the same story? What larger idea or conflict does their opposition represent?
Misconception: If two settings seem similar, they are automatically parallel.
Clarification: The function of a setting depends on its effect. An author might use two similar settings to highlight a small but crucial difference, thereby creating a subtle contrast. Always ask what meaning is produced by the author’s decision to include both settings.
Summary
Authors create complex meaning not just with a single, well-described setting, but through the deliberate relationship between multiple settings. Parallel settings, which share key similarities, can emphasize universal truths or a character’s inescapable fate. Contrasting settings, which are built on opposition, serve to highlight conflict, expose social hypocrisy, and give physical form to a story’s central thematic tensions. When you read, pay close attention to the atmosphere, social rules, and sensory details that define each place. In your analysis, move beyond simply identifying these parallels and contrasts to explain their function—how their relationship builds a deeper understanding of character, conflict, and the work’s overarching message.