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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
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
Yanagihara sets her characters against the backdrop of modern-day New York City as they begin their professional lives and navigate the art scene. Renting new apartments or striking new careers, the college roommates organize their lives around Greene Street, Lispenard, and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. The four friends’ stories share the same cut from the city’s fabric.
The novel devotes attention to other places, too. As the novel homes in on Jude’s childhood, the story takes the reader from Montana monasteries to Texas motel rooms and college dorm rooms, from Philadelphia basements to Harvard Law School classrooms.
But New York City remains the epicenter of the novel as JB dabbles in avant-garde art and Willem works his way up to Broadway. A Little Life steeps itself in New York’s culture without grounding itself in any single historical context. The novel captures a city of MoMa exhibits and prohibitively priced apartments but glosses over more specific details. Restaurants are staffed by struggling artists, but events like 9/11 are omitted. The novel evokes the details of a place while also omitting others, dropping the reader in a landscape that is paradoxically distinctive and indistinct.
