Answer

Setting in Once There Was A King 

“Once There Was A King” tale was written in 1893 by Rabindranath Tagore, and the story’s setting hints that the period is long ago because it is a fairy story. This book is a story within a story. The fairy story setting is in Calcutta, and the mood was dull because the city was flooded(McManus, 2018). But for the narrator, his mood was light-hearted, focused on escaping his tutor or absconding his studies. The weather assumes a crucial role, as it signifies the mood, attitude, and behavior of the characters in the storyline. The author describes the rain and storm that was incessant and causing the city to flood (Tagore, 2018). Hence its setting incorporates weather conditions that influence the narrator’s attitude and behavior of avoiding his tutor. The narrator hopes that the stormy weather will prevent his tutor from coming, and when his tutor turned up, he faked a bad headache to avoid his lessons. The narrator could not maintain the illusion of sickness for long. He became assertive that his grandmother narrates a story. The narrator’s mood became jovial when his grannie agreed to his demand. The narrator danced in joy as he dragged his grannie onto the bed.

Grannie’s story sets the narrator in an attentive mood because he wanted to overcome his boredom. The grandmother narrates the story events from the King’s predicaments, explaining the tale of King, who had no son. For the King to get a son, he had to practice austerities. For the seven-year-old narrator, he could not relate to the King’s predicament because he is only interested in listening to the story (Gayathri, 2015). The background setting of the grandmother’s story happens both in a palace and the forest where the King had gone to practice austerities. 

The setting assumed a crucial role in the princess getting a husband. When the King returned to the palace from his twelve-year absence when he went to the forest, he promised that the first man he would see tomorrow was marrying his princess. The next morning as the King emerged from his palace, he saw a Brahman’s sin collecting sticks in the forest outside the palace gates. The boy was aged seven or eight and commanded the boy to marry his daughter. After that, the marriage garlands were exchanged between the princess and the Brahman’s son.