Setting Essay

Vanessa Gaston
Period 2
September 24, 2008

“IND AFF” by Fay Weldon
Essay

Setting is significantly vital when it comes to a work of literature. Such is the case of Fay Weldon’s “IND AFF”, written around 1988 in Yugoslavia. In this particular short story, the setting involves where the events actually take place and the moment it happens, and also in this case, the weather that the particular place is having. The author emphasizes the importance of the setting in the narrative by applying the different aspects of the setting, the technique she uses to deliver the overall theme of the short story.
The two main characters of “IND AFF” are Peter, the forty-six year-old professor, and his twenty-five year old student. Supposedly, these two characters are in love. They decide to take a vacation to Sarajevo in Bosnia, which is located in the country of Yugoslavia. The story behind the professor-student affair is that Mr. Peter is married with his wife Mrs. Piper—a mutual, unloving relationship. “Peter was trying to decide, as he had been for the past year, between his wife and myself as his permanent life partner,” (Weldon 202). This goes to show that their relationship has been going on for a quite some time now and the fact is that his wife is aware of it. The setting is major here because both are away from home, Cambridge, Massachusetts, which in fact the dwelling location of Mrs. Piper. Usually, when people in general are away from their native location, they tend to come to a realization of something. The vacation was a quest for his student, his lover. In Thomas C. Foster’s How To Read Literature Like A Professor, he writes that a trip is a quest for a character because as the trip comes to an end, the character comes to a realization, appropriately in this story, herself, a self-discovery that she never knew until that quest was fulfilled. She comes to realize that she never loved Mr. Peter. The woman he is dating (student) is the one taking on the quest. She goes to Sarajevo with Mr. Peter only to come to a self-discovering challenge that she must overcome. There is also much history behind the location that they both went to. They go to Yugoslavia, which was originally the Austria-Hungary Empire in Europe. Princip was an assassin who committed a crime—but to his country a dutiful act, and sparked WWI. Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the archduchess. Before he kills the archduke and his wife, he makes a spur of the moment decision as he took the once in a lifetime opportunity of murdering the couple. The reason the author adds this detail that probably seemed as though it had nothing to do with the story is to make the reader able to compare the woman and Princip’s decision. Princip didn’t think about what he did, he just fired the bullet and took off. The student thinks she “loves” her professor, but in order to get out of the imaginative realm she set herself in, Weldon puts Princip’s story in.” Poor Princip, too young to die—like so many other millions,” (204). She feels that she too will die on the inside, considering the fact that she is young and she would be trapped. The student at the end doesn’t want her life to be the same outcome as Princip’s life, who ends up in jail and dies there from TB. In a way, Princip’s prison cell represents a binding knot that would befall the woman if she stays with Mr. Peter.
At the restaurant the woman and Mr. Peter take is ironic. Usually, dining with one another is a sign of communion. But, that wasn’t it at all. She spots a young waiter at the restaurant. “One was young and handsome in a mountainous Bosnian way—flashing eyes, hooked nose, luxuriant black hair, sensuous mouth. He was about my age. He smiled…I smiled back,” (206). When someone is in love with another, the other people around shouldn’t matter. If she was really in love with him, she wouldn’t notice all of the things she does about him, the way she describes him in full detail, from his hair to his lips. Mr. Peter must suspect something because he questions her and she replies with a lie. She tells him that she is thinking about how much she loves him. This is the moment in which she realizes she isn’t really in love with him. “I went on, to cover the kind of tremble in my head as I came to my sense…And that was how I fell out of love with my professor, in Sarajevo, a city which I am grateful to this day,” (206). This also comes down to the setting and she even thanks Sarajevo for this. She realized she fell out of love with Mr. Peter in Sarajevo.
The type of weather Weldon utilizes for Sarajevo’s setting was a distinguishing characteristic. “It rained in Sarajevo, and we h ad expected fine weather. The rain filled up Sarajevo’s pride,” (201). The fact that it was raining allows the reader to foreshadow what is to come as the story terminates. When it rains in a story, it usually means rejuvenation, realization, or rebirth. Though it did not rain on the student, it rained on her vacation. The rain is a symbol in the story in which she again comes to realize her mistake. She does not really love Mr. Peter. At the end, she turns to leave. It was as if a light bulb just flashed over her head. “I stood up, and took my raincoat from the peg,” (206). She was getting ready to go out in the rain, to go back home in Massachusetts. The rain played an important role because it rained the entire time they were in Sarajevo. The theme of the short story is that one comes to a realization and also to escape in a way from something that one thought they wanted, but didn’t really. All these techniques the author ties into the story helps in delivering the theme.
In conclusion, the setting in the novel applies to the theme. The theme is coming to a realization and entering reality once again. The weather, rain, that falls on Sarajevo, is a symbol of the rebirth of the student. The actual location and what happens in the location also applies to the setting because they were two of the major factors that actually build the theme of the story. With the style the author decides to apply to the story, she is able to create her overall purpose of her characters.