The Importance Of Setting In Under Milk Wood

Setting is an important element in a dramatic work, it reveals vital information on the plays location, the time and sets the tone. Although they are both set in a span of a day, I will focus on the differences of the locations chosen. Under Milk Wood is set in small welsh town and each scene rapidly moves to many different locations throughout the one town. In My Dinner with Andre the location is a fancy New York restaurant where the stay for the majority of the book. We know this because in the stage directions on the second-page states, “Wally enters a lovely-looking restaurant on a nice-looking street” (Gregory & Shawn 2) and then on last page the stage directions say, “Wally is outside, riding in a taxi” (Gregory & Shawn 113). Oppositely, Under Milk Wood changes its location about every page.

On page 8, there is a great example of this scene, at the top of the page the narrator says, “come now, drift up the dark, come up the drifting sea-dark street now… over Jack Cobblers shop” (Gregory & Shawn 8) then at the end of the page the narrator directs us to a new location, “in the little pink-eyed cottage next to the undertakers, lie, alone the seventeen snoring gentle stone of Mister Waldo” (Gregory & Shawn 8). The rapid movement of location in Under Milk Wood and the one location of My Dinner with Andre again contribute to the idea of looking at the layers genuinely. By having many locations Thomas is trying to provide the reader a deeper outlook of the everyday lives of this Welsh community. Thomas is generating a statement about the Welsh as a community as a whole rather than the specific people in the