To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee (Setting).
The setting is important in the story because the whole story grows out of the particular back ground.
The place where the novel is set is a county called Maycomb, an imaginary county in Southern Alabama in the United States. In Maycomb, most people were poor. Even the farm owners were always short of money. Black people worked at low wages. There was not much around as Scout says, "there was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy with." This poverty and unemployment in the county was due to the Great Depression in the United States in the times. The Great Depression economically affected everyone in the town. There was no money around for anyone to do progressive projects such as sealing roads and painting buildings. Also the people in Maycomb did not know much about what was going on in other places outside the county. They did not care anything other than their county. Students at school did not even know what "current event" was about. This parochialism resulted in people having small minds, narrow views and suspicion of anything different.
The Time when the novel is set is 1930's when the system of segregation was in force. Black people were not allowed to use the same rest rooms or drink from the same water fountain. This reflected in the justice system. Atticus, a lawyer as well as Scout's father, says about the justice system, " when it is a white man against a black man, the white man always wins " this quote explains how unfair the court was to Tom Robinson, who was accused of raping a white woman with not much proof but just the fact that he is black. The fact that Atticus takes on this case provides interest in the plot. He knows he is defeated before he even starts because of the attitude and legal system towards the black. He also knows that the people in town will behave with little consideration and tolerance because that is how they have resulted living in the county for a long time without any contact with people outside.