The Importance Of Landscape By Alice Munro

Register to read the introduction… Beginning with “Runaway” Munro uses the weather and seasons described in the setting as a tool to parallel the relationship of the couple Clark and Carla and to create the principal mood. Prior to realizing the relationship between the two, Munro invents the summer as “the summer of rain and more rain. The trails were deep in mud, the long grass soaking, leaves overhead sending down random showers even in those moments when there was no actual downpour from the sky” (Runaway, 1). To interpret Munro’s revelation of the weather and season in regards to York, the realistic image portrayed is as if looking at a picture and while looking at the picture the viewer lists all the minute details they see in the picture. With each additional detail the setting becomes more of a definite place, rather than simply a fictional location. The reader then mentally steps into the story. Munro engages the reader with this unfolding image that the reader can become involved with and relate to. The feeling of water falling off leaves and onto his/her clothing after a storm cleared or watching it happen from a window is a mundane and probable incident. Therefore, exploring Munro’s setting in regards to York establishes a separate awareness of her story and engrosses the reader in …show more content…
In “The Love of a Good Woman” Munro provides extensive and telling details that prove important toward immersing the reader in the story. Yet, it once more demonstrates that setting connects back to Munro’s familiarity of her home in Canada, along with the character’s feelings and evolving consciousness of the situation at hand. After recounting Enid’s past (the main female character in the story) Munro brings the reader back to the present by meticulously illustrating the environment of the summer where a murder ensued in a small …show more content…
The juxtaposition of strange behavior in weather strengthens the reading of Munro’s “photograph” of the Quinn’s residence as suspiciously “too perfect.” Munro’s weather reveals the “evolving consciousness” (Rasporich 130) that a death, in fact, occurred as a murder. The symbolism of the weather plays with the minds of the reader and the characters, like the body found in a river. Due to the impromptu changes in weather, the predictability whether it will be raining or extremely hot out vanishes, along with the security of living in the countryside. The universal association of the pleasant weather of summer and the safety of small-town life unexpectedly sever any assumptions with the irregular weather and secret murder. The early morning mist mentioned adds a sense of mystery combined with the course found in the river; however, the addition of the mist as part of the environment insinuates an eerie and precarious mood. Not only does the mist suggest secrecy and seclusion, but its placement also denotes danger and