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Personification
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 The Gilded Six Bits
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
“The Gilded Six-Bits” is set in Eatonville, Florida (where Hurston grew up), likely in the early 20th century. Eatonville was founded in 1887 and was the first all-Black municipality incorporated in the United States. The opening lines of the story describe the setting as “a Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement,” all references to the Blackness of the Eatonville community.
The opening paragraphs go on to capture another important element of the setting—the tidy and pleasant nature of Joe and Missie May's home:
[T]here was something happy about the place. The front yard was parted in the middle by a sidewalk from gate to door-step, a sidewalk edged on either side by quart bottles driven neck down into the ground on a slant. A mess of homey flowers planted without a plan but blooming cheerily from their helter-skelter places. The fence and house were whitewashed. The porch and steps scrubbed white.
Related Themes:
