The emotional emptiness in "Araby" by James Joyce, "The Chrysanthemums" by John Steinbeck which uses antagonism, mood and atmosphere in "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allen Poe

Authors Avatar

Daniel Koett

English 10

Mrs. Galang

17/05/05

Uses of Setting

Setting is the time and place of the actions in the story. However, setting can be more than this. Setting maybe used as an antagonist, a reflection of an emotional emptiness, the source of atmosphere/mood, a metaphor for human life and a reinforcement of the story’s conflict.

        In James Joyce’s short story, “Araby”, setting reflects the emotional emptiness of the boy narrator. The imagery of the opening paragraph like in this sentence, “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quite street except at the hour when the Christian Brother’s School set the boy’s free. An uninhabited house of two stories stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbors in a square ground” describes not only the loneliness between the neighbors but in particular the emotional emptiness of the boy. Besides that, it shows a hidden symbol that love can or is blind. This blind love is exactly what the boy is going through from the stage of childhood to adulthood.

Another illustration which shows that the boy is trapped by his own emotional feelings is described in this sentence: “One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It was a dark rainy-evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds. I was thankful that I could see so little.” The death of the priest, dark-rainy evening, no sound in the house, are all imagery to describe an atmospheric state of internal emptiness of the boy. The last sentence, where the boy was thankful to see so little, shows that it would have made his emotions worse when he had seen more of the room.

The boy’s emotional circumstances do not only last in the beginning of the story, but it is an incessant sentiment until the end when he arrives at the almost-closed bazaar.

“Nearly all the stalls where closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness”, this again shows that the boy is still feeling the same way. He could not buy anything for the girl which even puts his emotional state more down.

Join now!

“… my eyes burned with anguish and anger”, these are the last words of the short story which shows the reader that the boy’s feelings didn’t get better and that there is no happy ending for the boy but rather an increase of emotional emptiness.

        The use of setting as an antagonist is another way of describing the situation of the story. The short story “The Chrysanthemums” written by John Steinbeck, uses this kind of setting like you can see in the first two sentences of the story: “The high grey-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley ...

This is a preview of the whole essay