An essential element of any novel is the setting. The setting is “the time and place of action in a literary, dramatic or cinematographic work” (“Frame”). An intelligent author will create the setting for a specific purpose. While the characters in a novel live in the setting, "it can help create mood, influence the way the characters behave, affect dialogue, foreshadow events, elicit an emotional response, reflect the society in which people live the characters and sometimes even acting.” a role in history” (Benoît). Charles Dickens and F. Scott Fitzgerald take full advantage of the setting in their novels A Tale of Two Cities and The Great Gatsby. Both novels focus on the interactions between different social classes. The social classes represented in both books fall into the classification of upper or lower classes. Upper class characters are separated from the lower class by their wealth. Both authors created a few characters that represent an entire class of people. Dickens created Marquis Furemonde and a character known as Monseigneur to represent the French nobility. He created Doctor Manette to embody the English upper class. The East Egg is the refuge of the old money society where Fitzgerald's Buchanan characters in The Great Gatsby reside; West Egg is the neighborhood of the nouveau riche Jay Gatsby. All characters who are upper class are physically separated by the setting. Thanks to their wealth, characters can afford residences that disconnect them from densely populated urban areas. F. Scott Fitzgerald created the East and West Eggs “twenty miles” “due east of New York” (Fitzgerald 9). They don't live in a busy city. Instead, they are separated...... middle of paper... Scott Fitzgerald is a master at creating settings that contribute to their plots. The different settings create an interesting plot while emphasizing the themes of the novel. Works Cited Benedict, Carol. “Elements of the story: importance of setting.” The place of writing. April 13, 2010. The web. September 27, 2011. Dickens, Charles. A tale of two cities. New York: Signet Classics, 2007. Print.Domhoff, G. William. “Who Runs America: Wealth, Income, and Power.” UC Santa Cruz - Sociology. September 2005. Web. September 28, 2011. .Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner Paperback, 2003. Print. “Setting”. Def. 3b. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary. Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam, 1979. Print.