Setting & Mood

OBJECTIVES

• Students will write descriptive stories that show and not tell in order to demonstrate their ability to make inferences.
• Students will be able to analyze details in order to provide information about the setting and the mood created by the setting.

SETTING
(VIBE Magazine)Posted up in a service area just outside the ballroom, Lil’ Wayne stands off in a corner, by himself, leaning on a wall next to a rack of ice and soda machines. Through a set of double doors, 15 yards away, Wayne’s surrogate father and boss, Cash Money Records co-CEO Bryan “Baby” Williams, commands the crowd. As Baby prowls the stage, Wayne fires ad libs into a wireless mic from his perch in the hall then bounds up five metal stairs and into the spotlight—mic in hand, flashing his blinding grin.

CONFLICT
(By Edwidge Danticat)
I met a young woman who under questioning by a military officer was slapped until she became deaf in one ear, was forced to chew and swallow a campaign poster, and was kicked so hard in the stomach by booted feet that she kept slipping in and out of consciousness in a pool of her own urine and blood. Another woman had an arm chopped off and her tongue sliced in two before she was dumped in a mass grave, miles from her home.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
(By Edwidge Danticat)
When I met these women, some time had passed since their ordeals. But they could still feel the hammering of the blows and hear the menacing voices, threatening to drown them, dismember them and set them on fire. The younger woman, Marie Carmel, remembers thinking about her mother. Manman will surely die if I'm killed, she thought. I have to stay alive for her. Alerte, whose arm and tongue were severed, kept thinking about her children as she climbed out of the corpse-filled pit and crawled to the side of the road where she found help. Both had no idea how much pain they could endure until then. They wanted to live, they remembered, to defy their torturers, to tell their stories.

In-Class Assignment
Use one of the telling sentences below to complete the writing assignment.

• My room was a mess. (setting)
• The atmosphere grew tense. (conflict)
• He or She is athletic. (Character development)

Turn the telling sentence into a showing paragraph with examples and details.
Students must write a minimum of one paragraph, but NO MORE than two.
DO NOT use the telling sentence in the body of the paragraph.
USE the telling sentence as the heading.

GLOSSARY OF LITERARY TERMS
Setting: The main backdrop of the story where the story takes place. Elements of setting include time of day, location, historical period, culture, and geography.

Mood: the feeling you think about or feel when you listen to, watch, or read the story. The author’s choice of setting, objects, details, images, and words all contribute toward creating a specific mood. A vivid description of the setting can help you discern the mood of a story.

In Class Assignment
Language of Literature: A Mother In Mannville pg. 60

Active Reading & Visualizing
As you read the story, jot down details that help you visualize the setting of the story in the three seasons below.

Details About Winter	Details About Spring	Details About Autumn
“Sometimes in winter the snowdrifts are so deep that the institution is cut off from the village below, from all the world.”