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Personification
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
God Help the Child unfolds primarily in present-day California, a landscape of freeways, offices, salons, apartments, motels, and hospital corridors that reflect the novel’s emphasis on surface-level presentation. The sleek urban spaces where Bride thrives professionally (a cosmetics company, glossy retail environments, curated launch events) highlight the novel’s fixation on seeing and being seen.
Against this metropolitan backdrop, the characters take long drives out of the city, travel on stretches of highway, and stop at roadside motels. As Bride pursues Booker, the geography shifts toward smaller towns and wooded, rural pockets with less technology. These spaces create openings for the novel’s uncanny elements: the forest reads like a fairy-tale wood, a place of trial and metamorphosis rather than mere scenery.
Although the novel is set in contemporary times, flashbacks frequently return to the mid-century segregated South of Sweetness’s youth. By juxtaposing the Jim Crow era with the life of a young Black woman in the 21st-century beauty industry, Morrison highlights the ways in which racism, colorism, and prejudice have lived long past the victories of the civil rights movement.
