AP English Literature AMSCO Guided Notes
3.2: Setting and Values
AP English Literature Guided Notes
AMSCO 3.2 - Setting and Values
Essential Questions
- How does the social, cultural, and historical situation help shape setting?
I. Social, Cultural, and Historical Details in Setting
1. How does understanding the social, cultural, and historical forces that shape a setting help readers understand how characters interact with that setting?
2. What is the difference between a social situation and a cultural situation in a literary work?
A. Defining Setting Beyond Time and Place
1. Why does the example of a White soldier and a Black soldier returning to New York after World War II demonstrate that setting involves more than just time and place?
2. How did the GI Bill create different outcomes for White and Black veterans, and what does this reveal about the values embedded in the post-war setting?
B. Components of Setting: Social, Cultural, and Historical Situations
1. What factors can determine the social situation of a literary work, and how do these factors shape character experiences?
2. How are social and cultural situations linked, and why are they sometimes referred to together as the sociocultural setting?
3. What is the historical situation in a literary work, and how does it differ from the time when the author actually wrote the work?
C. Ambiguous Versus Specific Settings
1. How does Mohsin Hamid use ambiguous details about time and place in Exit West to create a timeless quality, and what effect does this have on readers?
2. How does The Grapes of Wrath differ from Exit West in its approach to setting, and what does each approach accomplish?
D. The Grapes of Wrath: Social, Cultural, and Historical Setting
1. What social situation do the Joads face in The Grapes of Wrath, and how does it force them to leave their home?
2. How do the cultural values of the Joads—their work ethic and family ties—conflict with their inability to improve their lives in Oklahoma?
3. What historical events created the Dust Bowl setting of The Grapes of Wrath, and how did these events affect the migrants' experience in California?
E. Their Eyes Were Watching God: Historical, Social, and Cultural Contexts
1. How do details about Nanny's past as an enslaved person help readers understand the historical time period of Their Eyes Were Watching God?
2. What social and cultural barriers did Black women face during the time period of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and how does Nanny's statement about preaching reflect these barriers?
3. Why is Janie's achievement of financial and emotional stability remarkable given the Jim Crow laws and segregation of her historical setting?
II. The Writer's Craft: The Demands and Opportunities of Genre
1. How does Tracy K. Smith use the setting of the U.S. border and the perspective of a Customs and Border Protection officer to reveal deeper concerns about immigration?
2. What do the questions the officer asks in 'The United States Welcomes You' reveal about the values and anxieties of the receiving country?
A. Poetry and the Power of Concise Setting
1. How does Smith distill the essential tension of the immigrant experience in just 164 words, and what role does setting play in this achievement?
III. Doors as Symbols of Transition
1. What do doors symbolize in literature, and how do different types of doors—open, closed, or swinging both ways—convey different meanings?
2. How do doors function as symbols in Exit West, The Metamorphosis, and The Rise of David Levinsky?
IV. The Immigrant Experience: Comparing Historical Contexts
1. What similarities and differences exist between the social, cultural, and historical settings of Hamid's Exit West and Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky?
2. How does David Levinsky's description of his arrival in America reveal both the wonder and the alienation of the immigrant experience?
3. What does the term 'green one' or 'greenhorn' reveal about how established immigrants viewed newly arrived immigrants, and what values does this reflect?
4. How does Levinsky's observation that his inner identity remains unchanged despite his material success suggest a tension between external transformation and internal continuity?
Key Terms
social situation
cultural situation
historical situation