Analysis of selected short stories

¶ … fiction, setting is one of the numerous tools the writer might use to demonstrate themes or create a mood and background for the specific themes to be addressed. Furthermore, it is also interesting to compare the way in which various authors create these themes and moods. Kate Chopin, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne for example all use setting extensively to create the mood of their respective stories, and also to form an appropriate backdrop for the events as they unfold.

All three authors make extensive use of the immediate environment to place their main characters in the center of the events that in each respect change their lives for ever. Kate Chopin, in her "The Story of an Hour" for example uses a bright and beautiful spring day to indicate Mrs. Mallard's mood as she contemplates the loss of her husband. Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne both use decidedly grim and dark settings as the backdrop for the events to unfold in their respective stories, "The Cask of Amontillado" and "Young Goodman Brown."

In "The Story of an Hour," Mrs. Mallard locks herself in her room after hearing and processing the news of her husband's death. She looks at a bright spring day from the comfort of an armchair in her room. The way in which the author describes it at first appears incongruous in the light of the grim news she had received earlier. Soon, however, the reader begins to understand as the day appears to infuse Mrs. Mallard's mood. The freedom of nature calls to the freedom her soul had longed for throughout her life with her husband. Although never openly abusive, Mrs. Mallard was nonetheless held captive by the will of her husband, and she experienced her new freedom keenly. Although she at first resists the feeling, as if evil, she does not take long to succumb. It is then little wonder that the shocking event at the end of the story -- her very much alive husband's return -- kills her. Hence, the brevity of spring is matched by the brevity of Mrs. Mallard's sense of freedom -- just an hour.

In Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," the setting is of a very different nature, but also concerns life, death, and the irony that often accompanies the interaction between the two. The main character and first-person narrator, Montresor, leads Fortunato to his grave for an unnamed trespass. Under the pretence of wanting his expertise regarding a cask of amontillado, Montresor leads his friend into the recesses of an extensive vault, which also serves as a grave for a centuries-old family. The story is filled with increasingly grim descriptions of damp darkness and "piled bones" belonging to the generations of Montresor's family. The increasing darkness then correlates with the theme of Fortunato's impending doom. At the final turn, Montresor traps him in a crypt and seals him inside. The darkness can then serve to indicate the darkness of Montresor's action as well as the horror of Fortunato's final doom.