The Significance of Setting with Cisneros in Mind

Sandra Cisneros, author of "Eleven"

One of my favorite short stories of all time is "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros.  You know the one with Rachel, an insecure middle schooler who minds her own business, trying to be invisible like most 11 year-old kids.  But on this one day in class, which happens to be her eleventh birthday, her teacher, Mrs. Price, stops the entire class to find out who's the owner of a ratty red sweater that's been sitting in the coatroom for a month.

When the classroom bully, Sylvia Saldivar, chimes in and says that it belongs to Rachel,  Mrs. Price forces Rachel to take the sweater and put it on even though it isn't hers.  Reluctantly, Rachel complies and bursts into tears only to be saved minutes later by "that stupid Phyllis Lopez" who finally remembers that the sweater is hers.

I love this story on so many levels.  What resonates for me as a researcher though is how Cisneros explains what it's like to be eleven.  She writes, "what they never tell you is that when you're eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one....  Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one."

What Cisneros says here about growing old for people is the same for setting.  Every event in a place's history has led up to the present moment, and as a researcher who is trying to understand a different place and time period, I need to peel back the different layers hidden beneath the present day surface to reveal the past.  In some ways, setting is like a character that develops over time, and as it does, so does its  sights, sounds, smells, etc. Obviously there's no way I can experience what Thompson did when he did, and certain aspects of the setting may no longer exist.  By taking the time to retrace Thompson's steps and soak in the setting though, I can begin to imagine what it must have been like for him. 

Bangkok circa 1950

Here are some aspects of the setting with shots from when Jim Thompson lived there and now.  Whether it's street traffic or the dying and drying of silk, researching the setting back then and experiencing it now will help inform my narrative voice when it comes time to write.

A Silk Dyer 2012

Jim Thompson in Bangkrua circa 1960

  
During my research, I saw clips of how the dyers used to wring out the silk with large tourniquets and then hang them on the banks of the klong to dry in the sun.  Today, it's a bit different...

 

Images from:  http://www.lowvilleacademy.org/webpages/MBlow/charles.cfm, http://images.google.com/hosted/life/965600346cbfc127.html, http://www.thaisilkhome.com/about.html