7.6 Setting as a symbol

TLDR

A setting becomes a symbol when a place is, or comes to be, linked with something abstract, like an emotion, an ideology, or a belief. Some settings, like gardens, forests, and storms, have carried the same meanings for so long that readers recognize them almost everywhere. This guide also covers three tools that often work alongside symbolic settings: motifs, similes, and personification.

Why This Matters for the AP English Literature Exam

Setting is never just background on this exam. Multiple-choice questions often point to a described place and ask what it suggests or how it functions. In your essays, a symbolic setting is strong evidence. It lets you connect a concrete detail, like a gray wasteland or a dark forest, to a claim about what the whole text means.

The same goes for motifs, similes, and personification. Questions will ask you to explain why an author chose a certain comparison or what a recurring image emphasizes. If you can explain the function of these choices, you can write the kind of commentary that earns points.

Key Takeaways

• A setting turns symbolic when it gets tied to abstractions such as emotions, ideologies, or beliefs. Sometimes that link exists from the start. Sometimes it builds as the story goes on.
• Some settings have developed associations over time that make them almost universal symbols, like a garden suggesting innocence or a storm suggesting turmoil.
• A motif is a unified pattern of recurring objects or images that emphasizes an important idea across large parts of a text. Motifs are often attached to a place.
• A simile's meaning depends on which two things the author chooses to compare and which traits those things share.
• When a narrator, character, or speaker gives a person the qualities of something nonhuman, that choice reveals an attitude toward that person.

How a Setting Becomes a Symbol

Associating a place with an abstraction

A symbol is a concrete thing that stands for something beyond itself. A setting works the same way. A place becomes symbolic when the text links it to an abstraction, an idea you can't touch, like grief, freedom, greed, or faith.

That link can work in two ways:

• The place already carries the meaning. The author describes it in a way that signals the idea right away.
• The place comes to carry the meaning. Events, characters' reactions, and repeated description slowly attach an idea to it.

Worked example: the valley of ashes in The Great Gatsby

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, the valley of ashes is a gray, dusty stretch of land between wealthy West Egg and New York City. Nothing grows there. The people who live there seem coated in ash.

Here's how to read it symbolically:

1. Notice the details. Everything is gray, dead, and covered in dust. It sits between the glittering mansions and the city.
2. Ask what abstraction it connects to. It stands for the waste left behind by the wealthy and for the moral emptiness beneath the pursuit of money.
3. Explain the function. The valley reminds you that the luxury of the Buchanans and Gatsby depends on people like George Wilson, who are stuck with the leftovers. The setting turns a critique of the American Dream into something you can picture.

Notice the move. You don't stop at "the valley is depressing." You name what it represents and explain why that matters for the novel.

Settings with near-universal associations

Some places have been used so often, across so many works, that they carry nearly universal meanings. Authors can use them as shorthand.

• Gardens often suggest innocence, paradise, or temptation, echoing the Garden of Eden.
• Forests and wilderness often suggest danger, the unknown, or a place where social rules break down.
• Storms often suggest emotional turmoil or conflict.
• The sea often suggests vastness, freedom, or forces beyond human control.
• Winter often suggests death or isolation, while spring suggests rebirth.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," Brown leaves his village and walks into a dark forest at night. For his Puritan community, the wilderness was linked to the devil and sin, and Hawthorne uses that belief. The forest becomes the place where Brown's faith is tested and broken.

These associations are a starting point, not a rule. Always check the text. An author may flip a familiar meaning on purpose, and the details will tell you if that's happening.

Motifs: Patterns of Recurring Images

What a motif is

A motif is a unified pattern of recurring objects or images that emphasizes a significant idea across large parts of a text or the whole thing. One appearance is just an image. Repeated appearances that point toward the same idea make a motif.

Motifs and symbolic settings often work together. A recurring image can be tied to a specific place, and each return to that image deepens what the place means.

Worked example: eyes over the valley

Back in The Great Gatsby, a faded billboard looms over the valley of ashes, showing the giant eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The image keeps coming back. Late in the novel, George Wilson looks at the billboard and connects it to God watching everything.

Combined with other images of seeing and watching in the novel, the eyes create a pattern that raises questions about judgment and morality in a world that seems to have lost both. The motif builds on the setting. The empty valley gets an empty, unblinking watcher.

To analyze a motif:

• Track where the image appears and what's happening each time.
• Look for what stays the same and what shifts.
• Explain the idea the pattern emphasizes, not just the fact that it repeats.

Similes and Personification

Similes: what you compare matters

A simile compares two unlike things using "like" or "as." Its function depends on two choices: which objects are being compared, and which traits of those objects carry over.

In Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," the speaker asks whether a dream deferred dries up like a raisin in the sun. Think about the choice. A grape that dries into a raisin becomes shriveled and shrunken. It loses what made it fresh. Picking the raisin, and the trait of drying out, suggests that a postponed dream doesn't simply vanish. It slowly loses its life. If Hughes had compared the dream to something else, the meaning would change.

When you meet a simile, ask: Why this object? Which of its qualities matter here?

Personification that reveals attitude

You probably know personification as giving human traits to nonhuman things. This skill points to a related move: a narrator, character, or speaker gives a person or character the qualities of a nonhuman object, entity, or idea. That choice communicates an attitude toward the person.

In A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens describes Scrooge as hard and sharp as flint and solitary as an oyster. Flint is cold stone. An oyster is shut tight in its shell. By giving Scrooge these qualities, the narrator shows a critical attitude: Scrooge is unfeeling and closed off from everyone. Those images also set up how far he'll have to change.

John Steinbeck does something similar in Of Mice and Men, where the narrator repeatedly describes Lennie with animal qualities, like a bear dragging its paws. The attitude isn't cruel. It suggests huge strength without full understanding, which shapes how you feel about what Lennie does later.

These tools can tie back to setting too. A character who seems as cold and empty as the place they live in is often reflecting the setting's symbolic meaning.

How to Use This on the AP English Literature Exam

Multiple Choice

When a passage spends time describing a place, expect a question about its function. Look at:

• Weather, season, time of day, and landscape.
• Loaded or repeated words in the description.
• How characters react to the place.

The right answer usually links the setting to an idea, mood, or belief, not just a literal fact. For similes and personification, pick the answer that explains what the comparison suggests about the subject, based on the traits involved.

Free Response

1. Make a defensible claim about what the text means.
2. Point to specific setting details, recurring images, or comparisons.
3. In your commentary, explain what the setting or image represents and how it supports your claim.

Strong essays notice complexity. If a place's meaning shifts, or if a familiar symbol is twisted, say so. For how characters respond to changing or contrasting settings, see 7.4 Character interactions with changing and contrasting settings.

Common Trap

Don't force a symbol the text doesn't support. If nothing links a place to a larger idea, it's just where events happen. A symbolic reading needs evidence from the details.

Common Misconceptions

• Misconception: Every setting is a symbol.
  Actually: A setting becomes symbolic only when the text ties it to an emotion, ideology, or belief. Some places are just places.
• Misconception: Famous associations always apply.
  Actually: A storm usually suggests conflict, but an author can twist that meaning. Check the details of the specific text.
• Misconception: Any image that shows up twice is a motif.
  Actually: A motif is a unified pattern that emphasizes a significant idea across large parts of the text, not just a repeated word.
• Misconception: Similes are just decoration.
  Actually: The objects chosen and the traits they share create the meaning, so swapping the comparison would change what the line says.
• Misconception: Naming the symbol is enough.
  Actually: "The forest symbolizes evil" earns little alone. You need to explain how that meaning works in the text and why it matters.

Related AP English Literature Guides

• 7.4 Character interactions with changing and contrasting settings
• 7.1 Sudden and more gradual change in characters
• 7.2 Epiphany as a driver of plot
• 7.7 Interpreting texts in their historical and societal contexts
• 7.5 The significance of the pacing of a narrative