Previous
Mood
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:
“In Another Country” is set in Milan, Italy during World War I, likely between 1917 to 1918 (after the U.S. joined the war). The opening lines of the story establish this wartime setting:
In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows.
As the unnamed narrator states, “the war was always there,” but he “did not go to it any more.” This implies that World War I is ongoing, and that the narrator, at some point, was an active soldier. (As readers learn later in the story, he is still a soldier, but is taking time to rehabilitate a leg injury at a hospital in Milan.)
This passage also establishes that the story takes place during a “cold” fall, when “the dark came very early” and “the electric lights came on […] along the streets.” This dark and cold setting communicates to readers early on that this is a period of “darkness” in the narrator’s life—he is, after all, traumatized and physically disabled from the war and far away from his family and friends. Even the seemingly positive description of how “pleasant” it is for the narrator to look in the windows of people's homes after the lights come on suggests that the narrator longs for warmth and community while standing outside (alone) in the cold.
Related Themes:
