Where It All Goes Down
"Oranges" has two distinct settings. First there is the exterior setting. The speaker and his girl are on a walk through an urban landscape on a cold, gray December day in the mid 1960s (judging from the candy prices). The only things in this cold exterior setting that seem to have any color or light are things associated with the girl.
The second setting in "Oranges" is interior. The middle section of the poem takes place inside a drugstore. The warm interior of the drugstore is where the narrative drama unfolds. Will the saleslady take the trade or embarrass the kid and send him out into the cold, candy-less?
The contrast between these two distinct settings mirrors the contrast between the poem's warm summery title, "Oranges," and its wintry landscape. It also mirrors the contrast between the way the speaker feels externally (cold) and how he feels on the inside (all warm and fuzzy in love). Both settings, though, work to underscore our speaker's feelings of love for, as he puts it, his girl.