Literary Elements Of Place Analysis

Setting is a literary element that writers use because it is that essential literary device which cannot be ignored by any writer in their literary piece. Setting in simple plane words is defined as the time and place in which action takes place. In other words it can also be defined as the description of writer’s world. Pictures, sounds and colors are drawn using words just like an artist painting a picture. The place of action along with time is the setting.
The two main components of settings, place and time can be further divided. ‘Place’ can be either physical environment e.g. trees, plantation, weather etc. or non-physical environment, which includes religion, economic background, culture etc. Place or location is the environment in which the characters lives or moves through out the story as in ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ by Mohsin Hamid, Lahore and New York are the two cities between which the main character (Changez) moves through out his life. The second component of setting, ‘time’ is as important as the place. Time is mainly divided into clock time e.g. midnight or daytime which helps in creating moods while reading, calendar time e.g. the attacks on twin tower (9/11), seasonal time which helps to connect with certain events associated with seasons e.g. winters and Christmas and historical time which helps to set up

If a setting is removed from the story or even if the setting is changed then the essence would change e.g. if the setting of The Reluctant Fundamentalist is changed from New York to any other city in America or in the world, then the story would not have same impact on the reader and the reader would not be able to enjoy it fully. There can not be a story without setting, whether it is a short piece of literature based on few lines or a long lengthy novel, both require an appropriate setting to do justice to the