Postmodern Scene-Setting in Qasem Kashkuli’s Short Story “The Return”

Abstract

Scene-setting is one of the constituent elements of narrative in fiction. In postmodern narratives, however, it assumes a function that extends beyond merely providing a backdrop for the occurrence of events. In Qasem Kashkuli’s short story “The Return,” the setting not only provides the spatial context in which events unfold and the narrative progresses, but also serves as a site where the protagonist’s experiences, emotions, and memories intersect with the story’s present reality. Employing a descriptive-analytical method and drawing on the principles of postmodern criticism, this study examines and analyzes the formation of the settings in “The Return” and their relationship with the components of postmodernism. The findings indicate that, by employing such postmodern features as nonlinear temporality, liminal space, spatial fluidity, the intermingling of past and present, the subjectivization of space, and symbolism, the author creates multilayered and unstable settings. Accordingly, the settings and the author’s mode of scene-setting contribute to the development of the story’s structural and thematic dimensions and relationships, thereby playing a significant role in transforming the work as a whole into a postmodern narrative.