Soru

The salt-crusted windows of the Marine View Hotel did not look out so much as they held back the gray expanse of the Atlantic, which pressed against the glass like a leaden weight. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of boiled cabbage and damp wool, a dampness that seemed to seep directly from the floorboards and settle in the joints of the guests. Arthur sat near the sputtering coal stove, his fingers curled around a teacup that had long since lost its warmth. The town of Oakhaven in December was a place of suspended animation; the summer tourists were gone, leaving behind only the skeleton of a resort town, inhabited by those too stubborn or too poor to flee inland. Every creak of the building's shifting timber seemed to echo Arthur's own stagnation. The tide came in, bringing with it a fog that slowly swallowed the pier, then the boardwalk, and finally the lower steps of the hotel itself. It was not merely a weather event; it was a physical blockade, sealing him within a domestic purgatory of drafty corridors and faded floral wallpaper, where the boundary between the decaying house and his decaying ambitions grew increasingly thin.

In the passage, how does the setting function as a narrative force that shapes Arthur’s internal state?