Raymond's Run

What is the setting of "Raymond's Run"?

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Since we see the story through Hazel's eyes, there are few descriptive passages of setting. However, the story does contrast an urban and a pastoral setting. The most striking description of Hazel's urban environment occurs when she enters the "jam-packed" park to race. She describes "Parents in hats and corsages and breast-pocket handkerchiefs peeking up," "kids in white dresses and light-blue suits," "the parkees unfolding chairs and chasing rowdy kids from Lenox," and "big guys with their caps on backwards, swirling their basketballs on the tips of their fingers." Hazel comments that "even the grass in the city feels as hard as a sidewalk." This urban scene contrasts with Hazel's dreamy meditations just before running, when she imagines "the smell of apples, just like in the country when I was little and used to think I was a choo-choo train, running through the fields of corn and chugging up the hill to the orchard." The two settings indicate an earlier, more peaceful time in Hazel's life that she is able to invoke by running, yet both settings suggest the vitality associated with Hazel.

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Raymond's Run