Setting

Written in 1959, the short story “The Osage Orange Tree” by William Stafford is set in the US against the background of the Great Economic Depression of the 1930s. This is indicated by the references to the “American history” classes, “the prairie town” and the “dust years”.

Physical setting

The general physical setting is “the prairie town” and it includes elements like the high school courtyard and rooms, the Osage orange tree where the two characters usually meet, and Evangeline’s house.

The area surrounding the tree is depicted in detail throughout fall and winter. The fall landscape is depicted quite romantically because it is when the narrator meets Evangeline:

There was a low place in the meadow by that corner. The fall rains made a pond there, and in the evenings sometimes ducks would be coming in - a long line with set wings down the wind, and then a turn, and a skimming glide to the water. The wind would be blowing and the grass bent down.

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Social setting

The story is set in a social setting defined by poverty, the years of the Great Economic Depression in the US, and it presents the way people were not even able to cover their basic needs:

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