Setting and narrator

In what follows, we will focus on the setting and narrator of the short story “Shopping for One” by Anne Cassidy.

Setting

The short story was published in 1984 and was probably intended to be read as contemporary to those times. The fact that the author is British and the use of British English also hint that the action probably takes place somewhere in the UK.

Physical setting

The main physical setting is a supermarket and, more specifically, the queue at the “conveyor belt” before paying. The elements that are mostly depicted from this physical setting are the contents of people’s shopping carts: “…had to wait behind elephantine shopping loads; giant bottles of Coke crammed in beside twenty-pound bags of potatoes and 'special offer' drums of blea...