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1. Describe the setting and compare it with that of Siddhartha. Throughout the story there were many occasions when the setting shifted from one place to another, but I think the main setting of the story was in a city. Although the author did not give much detail about city itself, I’m sure it that it was like any other. The city had many districts and the heart of the city is where one could find the business district, where merchants hurried up and down, chinked the money in their pockets, conversed in groups, looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully with their gold seals. There was also an obscure part of the town, which had its own bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow, the shops and houses wretched, the people half naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offenses of smell, dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth and misery. The city for most part of the story, particularly from the beginning till the later part was covered with a great thick fog that came pouring in every chink and keyhole and was so dense that even the houses, buildings and other structures were cramped up beside each other, appeared to be mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale. The fog was so thick that the ancient tower of a church, whose old bell was always looking down upon the town, became invisible. Although the story Siddhartha also had a city as one of its minor settings, most of the story takes place in the great outdoors, where one can truly see and appreciate the real beauty and awe of nature and Mother Earth. These were the forests, the rivers and mountains; the only places Siddhartha or anyone for that matter may find peace and serenity both in his surroundings and in himself. 2. Describe the protagonist and compare him with Siddhartha. Who between the two do you like better? The protagonist in the story “A Christmas Carol” was Ebenezer Scrooge. In the beginning of the story Scrooge was a squeezing, wrenching, scraping, clutching, and covetous old sinner. Hard and sharp as flint from which no steel had struck out generous fire, secret, self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.
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