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Pathos
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Key Examples in Ragged Dick: Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks
Setting
Explanation and Analysis—New York:
Ragged Dick takes place in 1860s New York and is specifically focused in Lower Manhattan. At the time, this area housed some of the city's most important business institutions and some of its poorest residents. It's important to note that New York City, one of America's densest cities today, was even more crowded at the end of the 19th century. Although Alger frequently asserts that individuals live freer and more prosperous lives under American democracy than they do under the British monarchy, quality of life for poor New Yorkers was abysmal, as the photographer Jacob Riis would show in his landmark book, How the Other Half Lives, published about a decade after Ragged Dick.
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