How does the setting play a part in the story?

Walker's
" " reveals a woman surviving against uncaring and indifferent social and political
forces.  No one is consciously out to get her, but the society is uncaring and indifferent.  The
story is only incidentally about race or rudeness or cruelty.  These are just part of the
package that comes with existence.  The boy doesn't shoot her, and the same people in town that
are rude to her also give her the medicine she needs for free.  No one is out to get her, it's
just that nobody really cares and nobody is...