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Personification
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:
A lot of scientific writing has no real setting, but that is not the case for Kimmerer's book. Braiding Sweetgrass is set in several places around North America. Most of it is set on the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples, around the Great Lakes region of what we call upstate New York and Canada. This is where Kimmerer has lived most of her life. She uses the stories of her own life here as a way into discussing the plant life and ecosystems in the region.
This storytelling is not a gimmick for reader engagement, but rather a reenactment of the way Kimmerer herself has come to learn about the natural world. Kimmerer was first drawn to the field of ecology because she wanted to understand why Asters and Goldenrod grow so beautifully together. Even though her college adviser laughed at her for this unconventional research question, her love of nature has remained a catalyst for her learning her entire life. For example, when she and her daughters move to a house with an overgrown pond, Kimmerer sets out to clean the pond so her daughters might be able to swim in it. This goal, which seemingly has nothing to do with science and everything to do with wanting to make a nice home for her family, leads her to a years-long endeavor to understand the local ecosystem. To remove algae, she must consider why the algae is there. What part does it play in the pond's circle of life? By taking the reader through her process of learning about and cleaning the pond, Kimmerer passes on her knowledge in turn.
Kimmerer recalls several times when she has moved or traveled to different regions, such as Kentucky or the Pacific Northwest. With each new place, she describes either explicitly or implicitly how she made a home there by paying attention to nature and getting to know the place. In the process, she teaches the reader about all kinds of plant life. From cattails to cedar trees, Kimmerer describes the way plants sustain different parts of the planet. In this way, Kimmerer makes it clear that personal experience in nature has made her a better scientist and a better teacher.
