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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:
The Remains of the Day is set in England, over the span of a few days in the late 1950s. However, the novel also contains lengthy flashbacks that occur in a single English manor, Darlington Hall, during the interwar period. This era between the two world wars was a fascinating one: it saw not only continued breakneck scientific and political innovation, but also the rise of Nazism and other kinds of European fascism.
While the present-day moments of the story occur over far less time than the flashbacks, they also cover much more geographical ground. The narrator, Stevens, journeys across England to see a former coworker named Miss Kenton. His experiences of the English countryside and unplanned interactions with common Britons are contrasted with his time in Darlington Hall, where he saw incredibly important men during influential meetings but did not do much else besides work for his employer, Lord Darlington.
The novel's setting—and recall that setting includes both the time and place a piece of literature occurs in—is one of the most important drivers of the plot and the philosophical questions that Stevens considers. The Remains of the Day explores, from the viewpoint of one man, large societal shifts in England such as the decline of the aristocracy. It also grapples with the merits and constraints of democracy, the appeal of fascism and totalitarianism, the meaning of a national identity, anti-Semitism, and a whole host of other questions that are not unique to the 20th century or England, but come into focus through the book's setting. It's clear that Stevens loves England, and the novel itself often reads like a celebration of England's working class, landscape, and traditions, even as it often implicitly offers Stevens's patriotism and loyalty to Darlington up for critique.
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