On a recent return trip from Seattle, I was explaining why I teach my students five fundamental elements of story. By teaching plot, setting, character, point-of-view, and theme, I am able, I explained, to provide students with a common language for discussing and thinking about literature. There is also a sort of literary calculus that operates among these elements leading to deep insights. exploring one element can lead to powerful insights about other elements.
Marla listened politely, and then posed this question, "What happens when a setting is also a character?"
I thought initially that she was referring to a story such as Asimov's "Fantastic Voyage," where the setting is inside an actual human body. My wife, however, insisted that settings, physical locations, were, on occasion actual characters in books.
"Give me an example," I demured. I thought I had heard similar lines of thinking before, but I was not sure she had, so I wanted her fresh take.
"I'll give you three," she said,"Hogwarts, The Matrix, and Gotham City."
Hogwarts, she explained, with its discorporate inhabitants, moving staircases, secret passwords, and Room of Requirement is easily as much a character as a setting; the Matrix, a virtual reality in which inhabitants believe they live when in fact they are enveloped in womblike cauls and serving as human batteries, is a malevolent antagonist; and Gotham City works a strange dark, and arguably purposeful, angst over Bruce Wayne (a.k.a. Batman) and its more nefarious inhabitants.
We spent the next two hours debating the issue and here are some of our talking points:
- What is the definition of character? Is it enough to say it is the people, animals or creatures/entities in a work of fiction? Are the members of a crowd or passerby characters?
- What is the definition of setting?
- What are the functions of these elements on the deepest levels of story?
- If there is a hierarchy of these literary elements, which is of greater significance?
- Finally, can a setting be a character and what are the conditions that should exist in order for this to happen?
I will tell you we spent a lot of time talking about the influences one literary element may have over another. We spent some time on willful versus incidental cause and effect. Finally, we began to think about other fuzzy boundaries in literary thought. All in all, a very satisfying trip.
