Prose / novel · Both
Setting & Atmosphere
Setting is not background wallpaper. Writers use place and atmosphere to reflect emotion, foreshadow events, or trap characters.
Setting as method
• Mirrors or contrasts a character’s feelings
• Creates threat, safety, isolation or freedom
• Can change as the story develops
• Symbolic places (e.g. locked rooms, open roads, borders)
Atmosphere
Built through sensory detail, weather (pathetic fallacy), sound, light and pacing.
Link atmosphere to the question: tension before conflict, unease in a “perfect” home, etc.
Practice questions
1. What is pathetic fallacy?
2. Why analyse setting in literature?