Please address setting in at least one of the stories from this week ("Vaster than Empires" and "Bears Discover Fire"). How does setting help accomplish the work of the text? Why does setting matter?
In "Bears Discover Fire" by Terry Bisson, the setting that the story takes place in is Virginia. The main characters go from place to place though, including the highway, their home, a nursing home, the median, and the woods. The setting helps accomplish the work of the text because it adds character and flavor to the story. If the bears did not come on to the highway with their torches or sit around a campfire in the median, and stayed in the woods, the story would not be as comical. Also if the setting of the mother was not changed (from nursing home, to around a campfire with the bears) her death just would not have been the same and the overall effect of the story would be different. The main character, (I could not figure out his name) would not have felt so sentimental towards the bears had he, his mother, and his nephew not spent the evening with them, on the median, in the woods, around the bears' campfire. Overall, the setting in this story was not particularly far out there, but nonetheless unnatural. Bears do not normally congregate on logs around a campfire, while passing berries in a hubcap (haha).
I really enjoyed this story, I do not really know what the "point" to it is, but it was an enjoyable read nonetheless. I felt very at ease and amused as I read it. I want a bear friend with fire. :D
Short, 245; 1/2 credit.
ReplyDeleteRemember that adult fiction doesn't necesarily have a "point" so much as a set of themes. If for you the story is primarily about an interesting set of interpersonal relationships in this family, then that's what the story is doing. The trick is to be able to articulate what your interest/experience is; if you have trouble doing that, practicing the RR method can help becuase it forces you to notice and describe your own interactions w/ the story.