The house in “In a House Besieged”

The primary setting is a house in the countryside where a man and a woman cower in their kitchen, interpreting strange noises outside. The sparse description leaves the house vague but emphasizes its isolation: “From where they cowered in the kitchen the man and woman heard small explosions" (68). The house becomes less a physical place than a symbolic one—simultaneously home and battlefield—where the couple’s conflicting interpretations of danger create a psychological siege, not necessarily a literal one.

The Kitchen in “The Fish”

In “The Fish,” the central setting is the kitchen, where the narrator confronts the cooked fish on a marble slab. The description is stark and intimate: “How can she eat this fish, cooling on a slab of marble?” (39). The kitchen, usually a site of nourishment, becomes unsettlingly bleak, mirroring the narrator’s mood after a troubling day...