Comparing the Use of Setting in The Shawl and The Portable Phonograph E

Use of Setting in The Shawl and The Portable phonograph In literature, setting is often used to enhance or develop characters, go out realism, and pull in a mood or atmosphere for a falsehood (Roberts 256). Two short stories, The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick and Walter Van Tillburg Clarks The Portable Phonograph explore victims of war in the vivid settings that the authors have created. Although both flora are vague as to geographic setting and place in time, the authors detailed descriptions of the characters surroundings envelop the reader and fetch an air of authenticity to the tales (Kauvar 180). The Shawl and The Portable Phonograph differ in their interference of symbolism and characterization but their ingenious use of setting to create a theme unites these two stories. The Shawl and The Portable Phonograph both surface with intense, haunting descriptions Ozick shocks readers with her portrayal of the Holocaust in searingly vivid sensory impressions (Watson 892) and Clark dedicates his beginning(a) three paragraphs to describing a desolate, war torn plain devoid of roughly all life. Clark immediately creates a sense of a dangerous, foreboding world, describing a sensation of torment that arose from the stillness of the earth air beneath the fierceness of the upper air (Roberts 260). The reader is left with an impression, filled with detail, but moreover, replete with emotion. The Shawl and The Portable Phonograph contain objects that are critical to the stories and to the mental states of the characters contained within. In the former story, the Rosa believes the shawl protects her baby from the horrors of the Holocaust, the scrap of cloth provides her with hope that the contiguous generation wi... ...rough their thoughts. The settings in these two stories act as more than obviously a backdrop for a tale, they are used to create meaning, undecomposed as painters include backgrounds and objects to render ideas (Roberts 255). Works Cited Kauva r, Elaine M. Cynthia Ozicks Fiction custom and Invention. Bloomington Indiana University Press, 1993. Magill, Frank N. ed. Critical Survey of Short Fiction, Vol. 2. Pasadena Salem Press,1993. Roberts, Edgar V. and Jacobs, total heat E. Literature An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Upper Saddle River Prentice Hall, 1998. Sheehy, Gail. tang of Survival. New York William Morrow and Co., 1986. Stine, Jean C. ed. Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 28. Detroit Gale Research Co., 1984. Watson, Noelle, ed. Reference leave to Short Fiction. Detroit St. James Press, 1994.