He Environment of a story Is the place where the action of the story takes place and where the characters are. It is the same as space in any narrative and lyrical literary genre such as novel, fable, poem or drama.
The environment is described by the narrator, be it an internal narrator of the story (as the protagonists or a secondary character) or an external narrator.
The environment has the function of complementing the actions and characteristics that surround the characters (Educational Portal connecting the neurons, 2017) so that we can know them better and help create empathy with them.
The story as a short narrative text usually abbreviate the descriptions of the environment and the characters, although the reader manages to understand in broad outline the characteristics of the characters and the environment in which it develops.
For its part, the novel being a more extensive narrative text allows the narrator to detail more precisely the characteristics of the environment, the temperament of the characters, the emotions And sensations at a particular moment in history, etc.
It is worth noting that the environment needs to be accompanied by a temporality that contextualizes to know if it is an old, modern story, whether it occurs day or night, during some days, during a certain season of the year, etc.
Environment classes of a story
The environment is the place where the story takes place; However, the place does not always have to be physical or material but can be of other types or the combination of these.
It is very important that the environment is related to the plot and the characters to give more credibility to the story and cohesion of all the elements involved in the story.
There are three basic types of environment that are not mutually exclusive. This means that stories can have a predominant type of environment but almost always mix with another to give a more complete and detailed overview of the synopsis and characters.
The types of environment are:
1- Physical environment
It is the place where the story unfolds and the characters converge. Usually, these open or closed environments may seem very real even if they do not exist in real life.
For example, a city, the countryside, the sea, etc. Again, the extension of the narrative text allows to be extended or not in the description of the physical environment.
To better understand this point, let us take the case of The three Little Pigs , An old folk tale that comes from the oral tradition.
The story begins by telling that the three little pigs lived outdoors and near the forest where a wolf lived that frequently threatened to eat them.
That is all the description they offer of space and the receiver of the story must then imagine the details of an environment with those parameters.
However, in the novella The little Prince , By Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the story unfolds in different environments such as the Sahara desert, asteroids and other planets, but there is plenty of description of the type of soil, the climate in each of them, whether it is day or night , How far or how close they were to the planet Earth, etc.
2- Social or sociological environment
It is the social condition in which the action unfolds taking into account the cultural, economic, religious and social class to which the characters of the narrative belong (Educational Portal Connecting Neurons, 2017).
Illustrating this situation, the story The Cinderella Adapted by Charles Perraut, locates the story in a distant country where a beautiful girl with green eyes and blond hair, lives with his despot stepmother and capricious step-sisters.
She has to do all the housework, eat the leftovers that her stepsisters leave and is usually dirty, which is why they called her Cinderella.
In this story they do not describe what was inside the house, in what city the house was, how big the building was, but they tell us that it is a sweet and tender girl who is exploited and subjected to bad conditions by her stepmother when Explain that she remained dirty, full of ashes, socially excluded and was the only one who did all the hard work of the home.
3- Psychological environment
It is the spiritual atmosphere that surrounds the characters and the action (Educarchile.com, 2017). In other words, it is the emotional and intimate environment experienced by the characters, the result of psychological approaches such as love, anger, revenge, fear, etc.
Horror stories play a lot with these types of environments to convey to the reader or listener the suspense, the feeling of fear and expectation, etc.
In the story The ugly Duckling By Hans Christian Andersen, briefly describe that events happen on a farm but extend a little more in the mocking of the other birds to the Ugly Duckling, the sadness he felt, the rejection of all, his flight from various places, the Abandonment, misunderstanding, his longing to be a swan, etc.
From the previous case, we understand that the author emphasized in the emotional picture that occurred inside the Ugly Duckling, rather than in the physical environments where it was.
In the case of the novel The Lord of the rings , Frodo, one of the main characters, comes from a small, quiet and secluded region that cooperates in Frodo's temperament to be docile, kind, simple and serene.
In his mission to destroy the One Ring, Frodo must go through different places where he faces problems that synchronize with his mood and emotions.
Finally, he arrives in Mordor, a dead place, full of evil and dangerous in which the exhaustion and the hard confronting tests have definitively transformed the psyche of the character.
References
- Department of Spanish Language and Literature. (4 of 7 of 2017). Characteristics of the novel. Retrieved from"Wikispaces": wikispaces.com.
- Educarchile.com. (4 of 7 of 2017). Literature and literary genres. Retrieved from"Educarchile: educarchile.cl."
- Exupéry, A.D. (22 of 7 of 2017). The little Prince. Obtained from Agirre Gabiria: agirregabiria.net.
- Educational Portal connecting the neurons. (22 of 7 of 2017). Environment or space in the narration . Obtained from Educational Port connecting the neurons: portaleducativo.net.
- Tolkien, J. R. (1999). Trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Madrid: Minotaur.