Literary Analysis: Settings, Characters, and Themes

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Here is the analysis of the setting of “The Last Leaf” by O. Henry. There are three types of setting:

This short story was written in 1907, and the time setting is very close to the time of publishing, as the beginning of the 20th century was the time when Greenwich Village gained its reputation as a welcoming place for artists. Note that the events depicted in the story spread over the course of a few days, from the moment Johnsy falls sick with pneumonia to the day when she feels better and Behrman dies.

The Greenwich Village is depicted in the following extract: “In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called ‘places.’ These ‘places’ make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!”

Finally, the social setting focuses on the lives of artists.

“Old Behrman” is a sixty-year-old curmudgeon who lives on the ground floor of the “squatty three-story brick apartment building” in which two young aspiring artists, Sue and Johnsy, also dwell.

Mr. Behrman is a failure as a painter because for forty years he has intended to paint a masterpiece but still has not begun. To support himself, he sometimes does illustrations for businesses, and he poses as a model for the aspiring artists in Greenwich Village who cannot afford professional models. He is a “fierce little old man” who disparages weakness of character in anyone. Notwithstanding his crusty demeanor, Mr. Behrman has a tender heart for the two girls who live above him. In fact, he “regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above.”

When Sue, who has asked him to pose for her, tells Mr. Behrman that her friend Johnsy has become so weak and despondent after contracting pneumonia that she has decided to measure her life by the ivy leaves that fall off a building outside her window, Behrman is incensed: with his red eyes plainly streaming, [he] shouted his contempt and derision for idiotic imaginings.” In his Yiddish accent, he includes Sue in.

In the beginning of the story, Madame Loisel is obsessed with status and money. She is dissatisfied with her station in life. She was born into a family of low status. Madame Matilda Loisel, the main character in Guy De Maupassant’s short story, “The Necklace,” is a dynamic character whose attitude and perspective about life goes through changes over the ten years she spent repaying her debt. She takes a husband who is a lowly clerk, and she is dissatisfied with the modest home she lives in. Following is an example of her desires from the text:

“She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury. She suffered from the poorness of her house, from its mean walls, worn chairs, and ugly curtains. All these things, of which other women of her class would not even have been aware.”

The title “The Homecoming” is appropriate because Phatik has several different crossroads in the story that involve coming home – both symbolically and literally.

The first homecoming Phatik experiences is at the beginning of the story. His younger, favored brother was injured in a scuffle and ran home to tattle to their mother. Phatik delays returning home because he knows that he’ll face an unjust punishment.

When he finally goes home, however, he has the opportunity to go to another home. His uncle Bhishamber offers to take him to Calcutta, where he’ll be educated and live with his cousins. Phatik is very excited to go and even makes peace with his brother Makhan for the first time when he gives him his treasured goods.

Phatik was staying away from his mother and home, for a boy of fourteen, his own home is the only Paradise. To live in a strange house with strange people is little short of torture, while the height of bliss is to receive the kind looks of women and never to be slighted by them.

It was anguish to Phatik to be the unwelcome guest in his aunt’s house, despised by this elderly woman and slighted on every occasion. If ever she asked him to do anything for her, he would be so overjoyed that he would overdo it; and then she would tell him not to be so stupid, but to get on with his lessons.

The cramped atmosphere of neglect oppressed Phatik so much that he felt that he could hardly breathe. He wanted to go out into the open country and fill his lungs with fresh air. But there was no open country to go to. Surrounded on all sides by Calcutta houses and walls, he would dream night after night of his village home and long to be back there. He remembered the glorious meadow where he used to fly his kite all day long; the broad river-banks where he would wander about.

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The story is horror because in “The Open Window,” a young woman named Vera frightens her new houseguest Mr. Nuttel with a lie about her uncle, Mr. Sappleton, and his two brothers-in-law drowning in a bog. When Nuttel sees the men walking toward the house, he assumes they’re ghosts who’ll come in through the open window.

Eccentric hypochondriac Mr. Nuttel visits the country at the urging of his doctor. He arrives at the home of his new hosts, the Sappletons, and is received by Mrs. Sappleton’s niece, Vera.

Vera tells him that her uncle and his brothers-in-law drowned in a bog three years before and that her aunt leaves the French window open because she believes they will one day return. This is a lie, of course, but Mr. Nuttel believes it.

When the men walk toward the house, Mr. Nuttel thinks they’re ghosts and flees the house immediately. Vera lies about his reasons for leaving, claiming that he was once attacked by dogs in India and is afraid of the Sappletons’ spaniel because of it.

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In the story ‘the open window’ Vera is the most important character in “The Open Window.” Saki needed someone who would prepare Framton Nuttel for a big shock when the three supposedly dead hunters returned at dusk. It couldn’t be Mrs. Sappleton because it would be completely out of character for her to play such a trick. It had to be a mischievous child–but not too young because a young child couldn’t bring it off convincingly. A boy or a girl? A girl would be best because a boy would probably be off hunting with the other males. She couldn’t be too old, either. An older girl probably wouldn’t have.

The setting used in the story is very different, where one event gives rise to another event. Now consider the context in which the event of sneezing takes place. If someone were to sneeze at home, or while chatting with his equals, the event would go unnoticed. It would also go unnoticed if a villager were to sneeze or cough even in a Panchayat meeting. But in a sophisticated social circle, different norms of decorum prevail; here even an involuntary action like sneezing or coughing is normally followed by an expression of apology like “I’m sorry” “Excuse me.” Feeling a little embarrassed for breaking a rule of social decorum is understandable; but feeling miserable is abnormal; and being obsessed with fear about it is ridiculous. How can one explain the lack of proportion between the event and the result?

Chervyakov is a small, timid man. He is over conscious of his inferior social status; The situation in which he is placed is exceptional. He has got a rare opportunity of entering the charmed sophisticated circle, for whatsoever short while it may be. He knows that, while he is there, he has to observe certain norms of conduct which are different from those he observes in his everyday life.

Note how elated Chervyakov feels in opera watching the performance. Particularly noteworthy is the twice-repeated word “excellent” in the first line, and the expression “the happiest of mortals” in the last line. For a small man (like him) it must be a great thing to be able to go to the theatre, to see a fashionable play – a French play. One must not forget the mention of the opera glasses (small binoculars) that the clerk carries with him. Is it not natural that he should feel elated in these circumstances? Is the General shown to be elated? Or does he appear to take everything as a part of his routine life?

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From 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, twenty-six men in a building in a Russian town make pastries and biscuits in a damp cellar with a low ceiling blackened with smoke. The proprietor of their shop has covered the windows of the cellar on the outside with iron mesh to prevent the workers from giving handouts to the poor and the unemployed.

“We had grown so tired of looking at one another that each of us knew all the wrinkles on the faces of the others,” the narrator says.

They seldom speak. But sometimes they sing, their voices reverberating off the stone walls. The songs remind them of the past, “irritating old wounds and rousing sorrow.”

A most delightfully humorous narrative, “The Luncheon” is a slice of life story about Maugham’s luncheon date proposed to him by a woman whom he hopes is a supporter of his art. Having only communicated with her through the mail, the author is rather surprised to meet a woman of forty who gives him “the impression of having more teeth, white and large and even, than were necessary for any practical purpose.”

Since the author has only eighty francs to last him the rest of the month, he is anxious about eating at the restaurant where French senators dine that she suggests. However, his lady friend reassures him, “I never eat anything for luncheon,” adding that she never eats more than one thing. What she should have said is that she never eats more than one thing at a time because she orders several things, but each one individually, and sometimes they are not even à la carte: salmon, caviar, champagne, giant asparagus that has just arrived, a peach from Italy, and coffee and ice-cream. All the time that she is consuming such rich foods and drink, she scolds Maugham for eating red meat, as he has ordered mutton.

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“Hills Like White Elephants” opens with a long description of the story’s setting in a train station surrounded by hills, fields, and trees in a valley in Spain. A man known simply as the American and his girlfriend sit at a table outside the station, waiting for a train to Madrid.

It is hot, and the man orders two beers. The girl remarks that the nearby hills look like white elephants, to which the American responds that he’s never seen one. They order more drinks and begin to bicker about the taste of the alcohol. The American chastises her and says that they should try to enjoy themselves. The girl replies that she’s merely having fun and then retracts her earlier comment by saying the hills don’t actually look like white elephants to her anymore.

They order more drinks, and the American mentions that he wants the girl, whom he calls “Jig,” to have an operation, although he never actually specifies what kind of operation. He seems agitated and tries to downplay the operation’s seriousness. He argues that the operation would be simple, for example, but then says the procedure really isn’t even an operation at all.

As early as the 1920s, motion pictures had a strong influence on novelists and short story writers. Some of Ernest Hemingway’s stories are like movies – which explains why so many were adapted to movies. The same was true for Dashiell Hammett, who wrote in an objective way and relied heavily on dialogue to convey exposition. His novel The Maltese Falcon was made into movies three times. When a movie opens – that is, when the camera “fades in” – there is usually no explanation of the problem, the setting, or anything else. There may be a so-called “establishing shot.” For instance, if the story takes place in Paris, you will see the Eiffel Tower and know you are in Paris. If it takes place in New York, you are likely to see a lot of skyscrapers. Movies usually can only show people doing things in outdoor or indoor settings and talking to each other. The viewer has to pick up information from the actors’ dialogue. Sometimes there is a “voice-over” narrator, which is equivalent to prose exposition in a story; but movie makers do not like voice-over narrators. “Hills Like White Elephants” opens with the equivalent of an “establishing shot”:

As the story begins, we are introduced to Hester, a woman who lives with her husband, two daughters, and a son in a nice neighborhood. Hester is dissatisfied with motherhood and feels that she needs more money in order to maintain a more luxurious standard of living. The children also sense their mother’s desire for more wealth. They can hear the house whispering about money.

One day, the son, Paul, asks his mother why they don’t have a car of their own like their uncle Oscar.

The mother explains that Paul’s father has no luck and is unable to make as much money. Paul declares that he has luck. Paul starts to spend a lot of time riding his rocking horse. He believes that if he rides the horse long enough, it will tell him where he can find luck.

Paul’s sister, Joan, and his nanny are annoyed by his rocking horse habit.