Setting How Settings Define Characters: Into the

¶ … Setting How Settings Define Characters: Into the Wild and Sex and the City Every year at the Oscars, an academy award is awarded to the best costume designer, to the best in visual effects, to the best sound editing and best sound mixing. All of these individual elements work in harmony to create the setting of a motion picture- a setting that the audience will remember, so incredible that it makes the plot better.

Settings are extremely important facet in any story- a book, a movie, a television show, as it helps the audience imagine that they are there and walking alongside the characters on the screen or through the pages of a novel. Settings are also important in propelling the individual characters through the plot- the setting helps meld their personalities, their actions and reactions to certain situations.

The idea that settings aid in the shaping the main characters of a story are illuminated in Into the Wild and by Sex and the City, where characters are defined by their settings in a myriad of ways. Settings are the backdrop both literally and figuratively to a character. Figuratively speaking, the setting is the environment that the character is entrenched in and that the characters interact with on a daily basis- these interactions are what help shape and define main characters.

For instance, in Sex and the City, main character Carrie Bradshaw often finds herself in situations that can only be in New York City. In this particular cosmopolitan city, cabs are lost, gossip is rampant and scathing and people are different and unique, among other details; but, it is important to acknowledge that when all these particular parts of the whole are working together they confront Carrie with different situations.

Carrie is asked to pose in a magazine in different wedding dresses, as the infamously single Bradshaw is now getting married. But, when she is left groom-less at the altar, the news spreads through New York and Carrie deals with it by dying her hair, and hiring an assistant to move back into her old apartment and get her life and closet organized. The harsh gossip fuelled nature of New York forces Carrie to dip into the defence, something that would not happen in a rural countryside.

The backdrop of New York and Carrie's interaction with it in this specific situation shape Carrie's personality- she is humbled and humiliated but strong enough to deal with it and move forward with her life. As a woman in New York, Bradshaw is able to continue on with her life and take charge of all that is hers. Bradshaw is successful authors who is strong enough and secure enough in herself that she moves past a failed relationship.

The movie, mainly by the vehicle of Carrie Bradshaw is able to successfully depict the "spirit of female solidarity" and the acceptance of being a "single urban woman" (Wisniewski). Though, the bustling city environment is in sharp contrast to the setting that embraces main character, Christopher McCandless, in the remote areas of the western United States. McCandless interacts with nature in his surrounding, and unlike Bradshaw, is distant from "civilization." The interactions that Christopher has with his environment/setting help shape him as an individual.

For example, when Christopher's car is caught in a flash flood, he realizes that he is going to be forced to hitchhike. Faced with that situation, another option would be simply to turn back and go back to the more mainstream life that he was once used too; but, this particular interaction with the setting made Christopher grow stronger and helped him prepare with the adversity that would meet him on his journey.

Furthermore, when Christopher's supplies are beginning to run out, he realizes that nature is not a welcoming escape from reality but a rather harsh and unrelenting thing. This particular realization and interaction with the environment helps Christopher mature as a person thus contributing to him as a character. As an the son of an "upper class family" who grew up in the comfort of the suburbs and was college educated, his male upper-class background seemed to dictate his potential in life (Hiott).

By venturing outside the norm and distancing himself from civilization, Christopher also distanced himself from his expected role in the family and in society. Being a college educated male of an upper-class, one may stereotypically expect him to find a job and eventually settle down but he.