We have already read a story, London’s “To Build a Fire,” in which the setting (the wintry northwest forest) actually becomes a character in the story, and not just a character, but the antagonist. In the exemplary stories that follow, the setting takes over the story, almost as if it is a character in the story. Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” is actually about the setting, and in O’Brien’s “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” the setting (the war in Vietnam) is on every page of the narrative, and influences every character and every event. As you read these stories, ask yourself what role setting plays, and note the detail with which each setting is depicted.
Copyright laws prevent me from post these stories, but they should be available to read online. Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” was originally published in his 1933 collection Men Without Women, and currently available in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition (Scribner, 1998). Finca Vigia (translated lookout house) was the name of the home Hemingway bought in Cuba in 1940, and where he lived most of the rest of his life.
Tim O’Brien’s “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” was published in O’Brien’s collection of stories entitled The Things They Carried (Houghton Mifflin, 1990).