Setting
The settings of the story depicted in the images in Chapter One include the open road,
the employment agency, the Gabilan Mountains, and the Salinas River. Setting is a
resource that is used as a sign of safety and danger throughout the novel. There is a
stark contrast between the light and open space of the outdoors, and the dark and
confined- space of the in-doors. The actions of the characters and settings throughout
the novel on the CD-ROM create a visual link between ‘nature and safety’ and
‘danger and man-made environments’. When the characters are shown outdoors in
‘natural’ settings (which might be read as an absence of ‘society’) they are
represented as being safe. When they are re-presented inside, they are represented as
being either in danger or ‘in potential danger’. In this way, the setting is used as a
visual metaphor to emphasise the threat of society and the comfort of nature
(embodied in George and Lennie’s ‘dream’ of living alone together in a rural setting
and tending nature). While setting is used as a written metaphor in the novel, the
visual mode foregrounds this theme in the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’.
In addition to the images of the settings in each screen of the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’,
the written text includes hyperlinks to a map of the (geographical) area in which the
novel is set. Locations named in the writing are circled in red, these words link to a
map of the area at the time the novel was written. In this way, the narrative is a
setting represented as having an everyday reality, and in an image of ‘real’ landscape
of the past. This locates the setting more in the realm of ‘the actional’, in the realm of
‘fact’ rather than ‘fiction’.
The Compositional Relationship between Image and Writing
The amount of screen-space occupied by image and writing on each of the screens
varies throughout the chapter. Expressed as a ratio, the ratio of image to writing
varies the between 5:1 and 3:2. Image dominates the screen-space in the majority of
the screens: more than half of the screen-space is occupied by image in over three-
quarters of the screens (Table 4.1).
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