Essay on "Analyzing Character and Setting"

Essay 4 pages (1416 words) Sources: 1

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Character & Setting

Odour of Chrysanthemums

In any story, the author's description of setting can serve several functions at the same time, all relevant and necessary to the telling of the story. Setting is not only what is seen, but it also incorporates all other senses, to make setting also what is heard, what is smelled, and in some cases, what is tasted and felt. Take, for example, the short story Odour of Chrysanthemums by DH Lawrence. A large function of the setting here is to develop the personality or describe the character of the protagonist, Elizabeth Bates. In this story, Elizabeth's character is developed through setting starting with the moment the outside of her house is introduced, continuing to the time spent waiting with the children in her kitchen, and culminating when Mr. Bates is laid in their parlor.

Odour of Chrysanthemums is a story fraught with tension and suspense evident from the unhappy setting that is depicted in the first paragraph in a place where "the fields were dreary and forsaken" (Lawrence). As the plot moves along we find a family awaiting their father's return from the mines so that he may sit down and enjoy dinner with them. Tension is already present as the reader suspects with Elizabeth that her husband may not be home on time, and it increases when these thoughts are confirmed more and more as the time passes. At first, Elizabeth brushes it off angrily as another night when her husband passed by the house to down several pints at the Prince O' Wales pub "while his dinner spoiled and wasted in waiting" (Lawrence). Despite her angry outbursts in front of the children, the reader is still able to detect a hint of fear in her uncertainty of where he really is.

After Elizabeth sends her children to bed, she locks them in the house and heads into town to see if he really is in the Prince O' Wales pub as she suspects. When he fails to be seen there, her fear mounts as she heads home to wait for word from Mr. Rigley as he conducts a further search of the town on his own. The drama comes to its highest point when Elizabeth's mother-in-law arrives in a heightened state of agitation to announce that an accident has occurred, and boils over when the worst is discovered: Mr. Bates died of asphyxiation in the mine. Mr. Bates' body was brought into the parlor of the house and the two women clean and dress his corpse. It is in this final moment of death that Elizabeth realizes that she did not know the man as her husband, but as someone foreign and alien to her, and that after his death she must live on to produce another replica of the man she never knew.

Elizabeth's character is ruled by the environment in which she finds herself, which is evident from the first look the reader has of her cottage:

A large bony vine clutched at the house, as if to claw down the tiled roof. Round the bricked yard grew a few wintry primroses . . . There were some twiggy apple trees, winter-crack trees, and ragged cabbages. Beside the path hung disheveled pink chrysanthemums, like pink cloths hung on bushes. (Lawrence)

The words bony, wintry, twiggy, winter, ragged, and disheveled all give a feeling of barrenness, and it is through this look at Elizabeth's cottage that we sense her loneliness. That there is so much poorly kept landscape around the cottage (as in the case of the cabbages and chrysanthemums) would suggest that her loneliness is deeply felt to a point that she cares very little for the appearance of her dwelling, or her responsibility to care for it. The unkempt state of the cabbages and chrysanthemums would also in themselves suggest a quality of tiredness, weariness, and the state of being careworn. It comes as no surprise later on that Elizabeth holds a long, tired anger toward her husband; she is used to his neglect of the family.

Despite the anger and weariness Elizabeth has toward her husband's repeated neglect, Elizabeth is also capable of different emotions, as the setting in her kitchen would suggest. When… READ MORE

How to Reference "Analyzing Character and Setting" Essay in a Bibliography

Related Essays:

Transmedia Characters Sherlock Holmes Term Paper

Sherlock Holmes

While any character could in theory be transmedial, in practice there are certain features about a fictional character that makes it more likely he or she will reoccur… read more

Term Paper 14 pages (4486 words) Sources: 14 Style: MLA Topic: Literature / Poetry

---

Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai Term Paper

Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai

Osamu Dazai's masterpiece "The setting sun" (originally Shayo) was written in 1947 and it is a remarkable story about the decline of a Japanese aristocratic… read more

Term Paper 5 pages (1483 words) Sources: 1+ Topic: Family / Dating / Marriage

---

Transmedia Characters Term Paper

Transmedia

Sherlock Holmes: Traversing Time and Media

Solve for X

In the fan-fiction story "Solve for X," which examines Sherlock Holmes in a modern setting, the famous detective has his… read more

Term Paper 5 pages (1581 words) Sources: 5 Topic: Literature / Poetry

---

Chrysanthemums the Influence of Setting in Steinbeck Essay

Chrysanthemums

The Influence of Setting in Steinbeck's "The Chrysanthemums"

John Steinbeck's story "The Chrysanthemums" is set in the Salinas valley in December, and the setting is very significant to the… read more

Essay 2 pages (595 words) Sources: 1 Topic: Literature / Poetry

---

Morality Then and Now the Technological Era Essay

Morality Then and Now

The technological era that we as a society have entered has completely altered the way that morality and proper behavior is viewed and expressed. Before the… read more

Essay 17 pages (7400 words) Sources: 0 Topic: Music / Musicians / Instruments

---

View 100+ more related papers  >>