Souffra nt |1

Christine Souffrant
American Prose Essay #1
Please discuss the importance of setting in several of the text we’ve read, looking
specifically at the passages of description as well as discussing overall themes.

Title: The Setting of Narrative Atrocities

“In the real world, nothing happens at the right place, at the right time. It is the job of
journalists and historians to correct that”
-Mark Twain

Some of the most phenomenal turning points within human history occurred when

the voices of the marginalized and oppressed were heard. The writers of our time have

powerful tools at their disposal and when used properly, can ensure that the voices of the

silenced are represented. The vocalization of social atrocities within narrative literature is

becoming more common place and styles of presentation are also evolving. One important

style of narrative literature that is challenging our perceptions of race, gender, sexuality

and other themes of social contention is the presentation of the setting. By definition, a

setting is “the context and environment in which a situation is set or the time, place, and

circumstances in which a narrative takes place”1. The framework behind the time and

place of a work will ultimately affect the overall message of a narration. It is said, “How you

build the world around your characters will play a vital role in the overall believability

[because] the type of world you create will determine the reactions and behaviors of your

characters”2. With this understanding I hope to discuss the role of setting and the audience

1
"Setting - Definition of Setting by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and
Encyclopedia."Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary. Web. 02 Nov. 2010.
<http://www.thefreedictionary.com/setting>.
2
Morgan, Tina. "Fiction Factor - The Importance of Setting." Fiction Factor - Writing Tips for Fiction
Writers. 2001. Web. 02 Nov. 2010.
 Souffra nt |2

it speaks to within three selected works, “A Small Place”, “Autobiography Malcolm X” and

“A Good Man is hard to find”.

Before discussing the role of time and place within each work, it is important to

understand the role of the audience in relation to the setting created. Ultimately a writer

frames time and place to attract or address a specific audience. In each work, the precise

reason why a specific audience is targeted is open to interpretation, but since many of the

narrations deal with historical atrocities within humanity, usually the audience addressed

is the specific audience needed to provide the solution to the problem.

If we begin with “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, at the surface, the audience is

the objective reader since Malcolm X addresses this audience three times in three

consecutive paragraphs with “I think that an objective reader…” (2631). However, we get

the sense that the audience is not that simple and is actually racially categorized. Since the

point of tension within the work is focused on the improvement of racial relations within

America, Malcolm X is addressing the American “Negro” and the American white individual.

He intrigues his audience by defining the purpose of their intervention into the racist

problem of America by stating,

“ I said that on the American racial level, we need to approach the black man’s
struggle against the white man’s racism as a human problem…I said that both
races, as human beings, had the obligation, the responsibility, of helping correct
America’s human problem” (2629)

Here Malcolm X clearly defines his audience as a two racial sects. The purpose of this

audience for the setting of the work is that the audience here can actually correct the racial

atrocities of time in a place where these wrongs have been if they take on the

responsibility.
 Souffra nt |3

The audience within “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is less identifiable partly because

at the surface it is not categorized but general. Connor does not directly single out a

particular group of people as did Malcolm X in his autobiography. Many scholars believe

that Conner was addressing humanity as a whole within her works because the characters

within the narrative were supposedly reflective of the characters of our society. Straying

away from the happy plot scenarios of common narrations, Connor forms a character base

that is realistic so it can relate and attract the common man. In her essay titled, “The

Element of Suspense In ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find, O’Connor stated “in my own stories I

have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality

("Suspense" 804). Her characters were closed-minded and self-centered. “It is in the

extreme situation that best reveals what we are essentially” ("Suspense" 805)3.

If we engage with the work more critically we find that there is a subtle dialogue

with a religious audience, Christians. According to Frederick J. Hoffman in his work titled

“The Search for Redemption: Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction”, Occonor’s major subjects,

include the struggle for redemption, the search for Jesus, and the meaning of ‘prophecy’

(33)4. O’Connor’s stories, usually speaks to a religious audience to address human relations

to faith.

Yet, no other work has such an explicit recognition of the audience as in “A Small

Place”. Where the audience in the previous works had room for ambiguity, in “A Small

Place”, the audience is directly evident. Kincaid addresses two audiences, the first being the

3
Myers, Amy E. "Critical Analysis of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find ”." Amymyers.250free.com - Browsing
Directory: /. Mar.-Apr. 2004. Web. 01 Nov. 2010. <http://amymyers.250free.com/oconnor.htm>.
4
Hoffman, Frederick J. “The Search for Redemption: Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction.” The Added
Dimension: The Art and Mind of Flannery O’Connor
 Souffra nt |4

average tourist. We as readers know that her first audience is the average tourist because

she makes it explicitly clear in her opening sentence with the statement “The Antigua that I

knew, the Antigua in which I grew up, is not the Antigua you, a tourist, would see now”

(pg3287). The importance of addressing this first audience is because historically, the

average tourist has been consistently naïve of the culture that lies behind the paradise

visuals of the Caribbean. The “tourist” audience is also important because they are part of

the problem that could also become the solution. According to VELVET NELSON’s “THE

LANDSCAPE REPUTATION: TOURISM AND IDENTITY IN THE CARIBBEAN” he finds that

“the legacy of the Caribbean's longstanding reputation based on landscape as characterized

in modern tourism promotions [is due to] visitors' written descriptions and illustrations of

the islands”5.

Kincaid’s second audience is the former colonizers of the world or Europe. We

know that the second audience is the former colonizers or Europe because she angrily

addresses their atrocities with the following excerpt:

Have you ever wondered to yourself why it is that all people like me seem to have
learned from you is how to imprison and murder each other, how to govern badly,
and how to take the wealth of our country and place it in Swiss bank accounts? You
will have to accept that this is mostly your fault.

All three audiences within the selected works provide meaning to the setting that is

created within them. By understanding the importance of the selected audience, we can see

why a writer chose to display time and place as intentionally as they did.

5
VELVET NELSON, VELVET. "THE LANDSCAPE REPUTATION: TOURISM AND IDENTITY IN THE
CARIBBEAN - NELSON - 2010 - Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie."
 Souffra nt |5

Setting of Time
“Nothing that I can do will change the structure of the universe. But maybe, by raising my
voice I can help the greatest of all causes…”
-Albert Einstein

Once we know our audience and who the writer is trying to address we can

understand what role setting plays in displaying major issues of the story. Time in

“Malcolm X’s Autobiography” is in many ways something that can be definable and not just

a nonspatial continuum. I say this because Malcolm X inspirationally makes it clear that

time is precious and that there is a reason to its importance, simply to seize it and fulfill a

purpose. Malcolm X states: “Anything I do today, I regard as urgent. No man is given but so

much time to accomplish whatever is his life’s work. My life in particular never has stayed

fixed in one position for very long. (2630).

Time in Malcolm X is also taken as something that helps put reality in a matter of

perspective since certain social issues change with it. He states, “ And in the racial climate

of this country today, it is anybody’s guess which of the extremes in approach to the black

man’s problems might personally meet a fatal catastrophe first-“non-violent” Dr King or so

called “violent” me. (2630)

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, time is not as seizable as depicted in Malcolm X’s

narrative. Time here is seen as a linear progression that can document a decline in

humanity. The grandmother, who is the main character of contention within the play,

consistently complains about the worsening of social relations and humanity as time

progresses. She attacks the changes in the youth with the statement: “In my time, said the

grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers. Children were more respectful of their native

states and their parents and everything else”. She is saddened by the changes in inter-

relations amongst people with the statement “these days you don’t know who to trust, he
 Souffra nt |6

said isn’t that the truth? People are certainly not nice like they used to be said grandmother

(pg 2571). Time is a main point of contention within the play since its progression is not

positive for society. “Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and

leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more. ..He and the grandmother discussed better

times. (pg 2572)

In “A Small Place” time is typically holds the same pessimistic attitudes as in “A

Good Man is Hard to Find” but has a sense of the “seizability” found in Malcolm X’s

autobiography. I say this because even though the author makes it clear that with the

passing of time, even though her beloved country is not same with the statement “That

Antigua no longer exists. That Antigua no longer exists partly for the usual reason, the

passing of time, and partly because the bad-minded people who used to rule over it, the

English no longer do so” (3287), that there is a point to vocalizing the atrocities of time,

essentially to challenge perceptions of her homeland. She says: “Are you saying to yourself

“cant she get beyond all that, everything happened so long ago, and how does she know

that if things had been the other way around, her ancestors wouldn’t have behaved just as

badly because after all doesn’t everybody behave badly given the opportunity”…Even if I

really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better than what

happened to me, what I became after I met you (3288).

Setting of Place
Although it is difficult to pinpoint the physical base or location of awareness, it is perhaps the
most precious thing concealed within our brains. And it is something that the individual alone
can feel and experience. -Dalai Lama

In the “Autobiography of Malcolm X” place is more than the geographical make up of

America as a nation. The place of contention in this work is American society and the racial
 Souffra nt |7

atmosphere of American homes. Malcolm X makes it clear that he needs his audience to

focus on the setting of their fight for better relations between whites and blacks in America.

He states, “Well, in the competitive American society, …they can’t join us.. …but make

change on the battle lines of where America racism really is – and that’s in their own home

communities: America’s racism is among their own fellow whites (2629).

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, it seems as if the importance of “place” depends on

its connection to the characters and not just its visual beauty. If you notice, when the

grandmother describes places using visual imagery she is ignored. “She pointed out

interesting details of the scenery: Stone Mountain….[but] the children were reading comic

magazine and their mother had gone back to sleep (2569). Yet when she chooses to tell a

story about a place, the kids jump at attention and the parents though annoyed by it, listen

just enough to complain about it as depicted in her son’s reaction with the statement “Lets

go through Georgia fast so we don’t have to look at it much John Welsey said” (2569).

It is ironic that the importance of place plays out to be the main reason why the

whole family is killed. The story starts off with a contention over place. “The grandmother

did not want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east

Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Baileus mind (pg 2567). And the

story ends with the cynical reality that sometimes life is not forgiving of being “in the

wrong place at the wrong time” since everyone is killed partly due to the grandmother’s

internal connection to place.

In “A Small Place”, everything, even the title, focuses on the place as a major issue of

contention for readers. Partly because the place of contention has not been correctly

represented over time and partly because the place has been a site of a human atrocity,
 Souffra nt |8

colonization. Kincaid starts off by directly addressing the false representation of the place

she holds dearly with the statement, “The Antigua that I knew, the Antigua in which I grew

up, is not the Antigua you, a tourist would see now (pg3283). According to Ralph R.

Premdas in “Ethnicity and Identity in the Caribbean: Decentering a Myth” there is a

geographical expression called ‘the Caribbean’ often associated with a site, a sea, and

several islands. It is easy to understand that persons from an imaginary region designated

the Caribbean may want an identity, especially one that is much bigger than a relatively

small island” (pg 42)6.

Secondly, Kincaid zones in on place being the site of atrocity and addresses the

wrong doer. She states “And so every where they went they turned it into England and

everybody they bet turned English. But no place could ever really be English…So you could

only imagine the destruction of a people and land that came from that” (3283). Both uses of

place within her work leaves the audience with a new way of thinking of the sensitive topic

she addresses within her work, the negative legacy of colonization.

In summary, the setting when created with strategic uses of time and place to

capture the right audiences, can really make or break the message of a narrative. Luckily

for us, our writers have developed a craft for making sure that the setting of their work

accomplishes what it is set to do; to reframe and challenge your perceptions of the

atrocities of humanity whenever or wherever it occurred.

6
Premdas, Ralph R. "Ethnicity and Identity in the Caribbean: Decentering a Myth." Web. 2 Nov.
2010
 Souffra nt |9

Bibliography

Hoffman, Frederick J. “The Search for Redemption: Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction.” The
Added Dimension: The Art and Mind of Flannery O’Connor. Eds. Melvin J. Friedman and
Lewis A. Lawson. New York: Fordham UP, 1977. 32-48.

Morgan, Tina. "Fiction Factor - The Importance of Setting." Fiction Factor - Writing Tips for
Fiction Writers. 2001. Web. 02 Nov. 2010.
http://www.fictionfactor.com/articles/setting.html

Myers, Amy E. "Critical Analysis of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find ”." Amymyers.250free.com -
Browsing Directory: /. Mar.-Apr. 2004. Web. 01 Nov. 2010.
<http://amymyers.250free.com/oconnor.htm>.

Premdas, Ralph R. "Ethnicity and Identity in the Caribbean: Decentering a Myth." Web. 2
Nov. 2010

"Setting - Definition of Setting by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and

Encyclopedia."Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary. Web. 02 Nov.
2010. <http://www.thefreedictionary.com/setting>.

VELVET NELSON, VELVET. "THE LANDSCAPE REPUTATION: TOURISM AND IDENTITY IN

THE CARIBBEAN - NELSON - 2010 - Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale
Geografie." Wiley Online Library. June-July 2010. Web. 01 Nov. 2010.
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9663.2010.00608.x/full>.