In "The Rockpile," what are three details that describe physical aspects of the story's setting or the landmarks of the neighborhood?

1. The rockpile is described best here: "Dozens of boys fought each other in the harsh sun: clambering up the rocks and battling hand to hand..."

Legendary among the neighborhood kids, the rockpile itself is a huge "mass of natural rock" that thrusts up from the ground in an otherwise empty lot, with a house on each side. It's huge, the site of neighborhood boys constantly playing, fighting, climbing, and falling, whenever they're not in...

1. The rockpile is described best here: "Dozens of boys fought each other in the harsh sun: clambering up the rocks and battling hand to hand..."

Legendary among the neighborhood kids, the rockpile itself is a huge "mass of natural rock" that thrusts up from the ground in an otherwise empty lot, with a house on each side. It's huge, the site of neighborhood boys constantly playing, fighting, climbing, and falling, whenever they're not in school.

2. The fire escape is described best here: "The sun fell across them and across the fire escape with a high, benevolent indifference..."

This fire escape is another important feature of the setting. Roy and his brother John sit there together, along with their mother, watching the other boys play. It's there that the boys feel a "longing" while sitting on this ledge, and it's there that Roy feels impatient, wanting to somehow "grow wings." From here, the boys watch everyone walking by, occasionally wave to people, and observe their father coming home from work. The narrator also ties this idea of the fire escape to the notion of sin: that we can sit and watch all the sinning going on, but we're sinners, too. That idea becomes more real as Roy is lured off the fire escape to play with the other boys on the rockpile, resulting in a terrible cut to his forehead.

3. The river is best portrayed in this line: "In the summer time boys swam in the river, diving off the wooden dock, or wading in from the garbage-heavy bank."

Lastly, this dirty river where kids go swimming is an important physical aspect of the story. It's relevant to the scene where, in the narrator's memory, we flash back to the time when another child, Richard, was swimming in the river and drowned. His father carried the poor child's body home while the mother screamed and screamed in horror and grief, making a scene for the whole neighborhood to witness. Although neither Roy nor John goes swimming in the river during this story, the river serves as an important parallel for the rockpile: it's also a fun yet dangerous place where boys play roughly together, and when the narrator mentions it, the reader makes that connection to the rockpile and feels an even greater tension when Roy gets injured there. Will he be killed, like Richard? This is what we wonder as we read.