Setting, sometimes background, may be significant elements in a plot, determining the scope in every atmosphere of the story. Without an interesting background, some stories would simply not exist.Take for instance “Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket.” The plot is a Workaholic named Tom Benecke who lives in an apartment eleven stories high on Lexington Avenue. his wife had left to go to the movies so that he could finish a project three months in the making. All the sudden a quick gust of wind blows it out and after much deliberation he decides to go out after it. Once he is out and on the window sill he finds that there is a good chance that he could fall to his death so he gets very freighted. One thing leads to another and he gets the sheet and breaks through his window to get back inside. Through all of this he had the time to look on his life and think about all the times he left his wife, Clare, alone. In the end he leaves and notices that the sheet flies back out of the window and doesn't even care. Plot played a very large part in this story. for instance if the apartment building was on the first floor then he wouldn’t be nearly as frightened. Or if his wife stayed home instead of going to the cinema he could have gotten her help, or she could have talked him into not going out there at all. Since the writer did a good job of describing what the plot was we know the kind of despair he was going through and can feel more of what he feels.Sometimes not only plot but background plays an important role as in "The Masque of the Red Death" . The story covers a period of approximately six months during the reign of the Red Death. The Red Death is much like the Black Death or the bubonic plague of the Middle Ages as well as the cholera epidemics that ravaged Philadelphia in the 1790's and Baltimore in his own lifetime. However, in this story, the plague takes the unusual form of a red death rather than a b...
