PLOT
Narrative a Simplification of Life--Unity in Narrative--A Definite
Objective Point--Construction, Analytic and Synthetic--The
Importance of Structure--Elementary Narrative--Positive and Negative
Events--The Picaresque Pattern--Definition of Plot--Complication
of the Network--The Major Knot--"Beginning, Middle, and End"--The
Sub-Plot--Discursive and Compacted Narratives--Telling Much or
Little of a Story--Where to Begin a Story--Logical Sequence and
Chronological Succession--Tying and Untying--Transition to the
Next Chapter.
=Narrative a Simplification of Life.=--Robert Louis Stevenson, in his
spirited essay entitled "A Humble Remonstrance," has given very
valuable advice to the writer of narrative. In concluding his remarks
he says, "And as the root of the whole matter, let him bear in mind
that his novel is not a transcript of life, to be judged by its
exactitude; but a simplification of some side or point of life, to
stand or fall by its significant simplicity. For although, in great
men, working upon great motives, what we observe and admire is often
their complexity, yet underneath appearances the truth remains
unchanged: that simplification was their method, and that simplicity
is their excellence." Indeed, as we have already noted in passing,
simplification is the method of every art. Every artist, in his own
way, simplifies life: first by selecting essentials from the
helter-skelter of details that life presents to him, and then by
arranging these essentials in accordance with a pattern. And we have
noted also that the method of the artist in narrative is to select
events which bear an essential logical relation to each other and
then to arrange them along the lines of a pattern of causation.
=Unity in Narrative.=--Of course the prime structural necessity in
narrative, as indeed in every method of discourse, is unity. Unity in
any work of art can be attained only by a definite decision of the
artist as to what he is trying to accomplish, and by a rigorous focus
of attention on his purpose to accomplish it,--a focus of attention so
rigorous as to exclude consideration of any matter which does not
contribute, directly or indirectly, to the furtherance of his aim. The
purpose of the artist in narrative is to represent a series of
events,--wherein each event stands in a causal relation, direct or
indirect, to its logical predecessor and its logical successor in the
series. Obviously the only way to attain unity of narrative is to
exclude consideration of any event which does not, directly or
indirectly, contribute to the progress of the series. For this reason,
Stevenson states in his advice to the young writer, from which we have
already quoted: "Let him choose a motive, whether of character or
passion: carefully construct his plot so that every incident is an
illustration of the motive, and every property employed shall bear to
it a near relation of congruity or contrast; ... and allow neither
himself in the narrative, nor any character in the course of the
dialogue, to utter one sentence that is not part and parcel of the
business of the story or the discussion of the problem involved. Let
him not regret if this shortens his book; it will be better so; for to
add irrelevant matter is not to lengthen but to bury. Let him not mind
if he miss a thousand qualities, so that he keeps unflaggingly in
pursuit of the one he has chosen." And earlier in the same essay, he
says of the novel: "For the welter of impressions, all forcible but
all discreet, which life presents, it substitutes a certain artificial
series of impressions, all indeed most feebly represented, but all
aiming at the same effect, all eloquent of the same idea, all chiming
together like consonant notes in music or like the graduated tints in
a good picture. From all its chapters, from all its pages, from all
its sentences, the well-written novel echoes and re-echoes its one
creative and controlling thought; to this must every incident and
character contribute; the style must have been pitched in unison with
this; and if there is anywhere a word that looks another way, the book
would be stronger, clearer, and (I had almost said) fuller without
it."
=A Definite Objective Point.=--The only way in which the writer of
narrative may attain the unity that Stevenson has so eloquently
pleaded for is to decide upon a definite objective point, to bear in
mind constantly the culmination of his series of events, and to value
the successive details of his material only in so far as they
contribute, directly or indirectly, to the progress of the series
toward that culmination. To say the thing more simply, he must see the
end of his story from the beginning and must give the reader always a
sense of rigorous movement toward that end. His narrative, as a matter
of construction, must be finished, before, as a matter of writing, it
is begun. He must know as definitely as possible all that is to happen
and all that is not to happen in his story before he ventures to
represent in words the very first of his events. He must not, as some
beginners try to do, attempt to make his story up as he goes along;
for unless he holds the culmination of his series constantly in mind,
he will not be able to decide whether any event that suggests itself
during the progress of his composition does or does not form a logical
factor in the series.
=Construction, Analytic and Synthetic.=--The preliminary process of
construction may be accomplished in either of two ways. Authors with
synthetic minds will more naturally reason from causes to effects;
and authors with analytic minds will more naturally reason from
effects to causes. The former will construct forward through time, the
latter backward. Standing at the outset of a narrative, it is possible
to imagine forward along a series of events until the logical
culmination is divined; or standing at the culmination, it is possible
to imagine backward along the series to its far-away beginnings.
Thackeray apparently constructed in the former manner; Guy de
Maupassant apparently constructed in the latter. The latter
method--the method of building backward from the culmination--is
perhaps more efficacious toward the conservation of the strictest
unity. It seems on the whole a little easier to exclude the extraneous
in thinking from effects to causes than in thinking from causes to
effects, because analysis is a stricter and more focussed mood of mind
than synthesis.
=The Importance of Structure.=--But in whichever way the process of
construction be accomplished, the best stories are always built before
they are written; and that is the reason why, in reading them, we feel
at every point that we are getting somewhere, and that the author is
leading us step by step toward a definite culmination. Although, as is
usually the case, we cannot, even midway through the story, foresee
what the culmination is to be, we feel a certain reassurance in the
knowledge that the author has foreseen it from the start. This feeling
is one of the main sources of interest in reading narrative. In
looking on at life itself, we are baffled by a muddle of events
leading every whither; their succession is chaotic and lacking in
design; they are not marshaled and processional; and we have an
uncomfortable feeling that no mind but that of God can foresee their
veiled and hidden culminations. But in reading a narrative arrangement
of life, we have a comfortable sense of order, which comes of our
knowledge that the author knows beforehand whither the events are
tending and can make us understand the sequence of causation through
which they are moving to their ultimate result. He makes life more
interesting by making it more intelligible; and he does this mainly by
his power of construction.
=Elementary Narrative.=--The simplest of all structures for a
narrative is a straightway arrangement of events along a single strand
of causation. In such a narrative, the first event is the direct cause
of the second, the second of the third, the third of the fourth, and
so on to the culmination of the series. This very simple structure is
exhibited in many of the tales which have come down to us from early
centuries. It is frequently employed in the "Gesta Romanorum," and
scarcely less frequently in the "Decameron" of Boccaccio. It has the
advantage of being completely logical and entirely direct. But we
feel, in reading stories so constructed, that the method of
simplification has been carried too far, and that simplicity has
therefore ceased to be an excellence. Such a story is in this way
misrepresentative of life:--it fails utterly to suggest "the welter of
impressions which life presents," the sudden kaleidoscopic shifts of
actual life from one series of events to another, and the consequent
intricacy and apparent chaos of life's successive happenings. The
structure is too straightforward, too direct, too unwavering and
unhesitant.
=Positive and Negative Events.=--The simplest way to introduce the
element of hesitance and wavering, and thereby make the story more
truly suggestive of the intricate variety of life, is to interrupt the
series by the introduction of events whose apparent tendency is to
hinder its progress, and in this way emphasize the ultimate triumph of
the series in attaining its predestined culmination. Such events are
not extraneous; because, although they tend directly to dispute the
progress of the series, they tend also indirectly to further it
through their failure to arrest it. The events in any skilfully
selected narrative may, therefore, be divided into two classes: events
direct or positive, and events indirect or negative. By a direct, or
positive, event is meant one whose immediate tendency is to aid the
progress of the series toward its predetermined objective point; and
by an indirect, or negative, event is meant one whose immediate
tendency is to thwart this predetermined outcome. It would be an easy
matter, for example, in examining "Pilgrim's Progress," to class as
positive those events which directly further the advance of Christian
toward the Celestial City, and to class as negative those events whose
immediate tendency is to turn him aside from the straight and narrow
path. And yet both classes of events, positive and negative, make up
really only a single series; because the negative events are conquered
one by one by the preponderant power of the positive events, and
contribute therefore indirectly, through their failure, to the
ultimate attainment of the culmination.
When a straightway arrangement of positive events along a single
strand of causation is varied and emphasized in this way by the
admission of negative events, whose tendency is to thwart the progress
of the series, the structure may be made very suggestive of that
conflict of forces which we feel to be ever present in actual life.
This structure is exhibited, for example, in Hawthorne's little tale
of "David Swan." The point of the story is that nothing happens to
David; the interest of the story lies in the events that almost happen
to him. The young man falls asleep at noon-time under the shade of a
clump of maples which cluster around a spring beside the highroad.
Three people, or sets of people, observe him in his sleep. The first
would confer upon him Wealth, the second Love, the third Death, if he
should waken at the moment. But David Swan sleeps deeply; the people
pass on; and all that almost happened to him subsides forever to the
region of the might-have-been.
=The Picaresque Pattern.=--A simple series of this sort, wherein the
events proceed, now directly, now indirectly, along a single logical
line, may be succeeded by another simple series of the same sort,
which in turn may be succeeded by a third, and so on indefinitely. In
this way is constructed the type of story known as picaresque, because
in Spain, where the type was first developed, the hero was usually a
_picaro_, or rogue. The narrative expedient in such stories is merely
to select a hero capable of adventure, to fling him loose into the
roaring and tremendous world, and to let things happen to him one
after another. The most widely known example of the type is not a
Spanish story, but a French,--the "Gil Blas" of Alain René Le Sage. As
soon as Gil Blas arrives at the culmination of one series of
adventures, the author starts him on another. Each series is complete
in itself and distinct from all the rest; and the structure of the
whole book may be likened, in a homely figure, to a string of
sausages. The relation between the different sections of the story is
not organic; they are merely tied together by the continuance of the
same central character from one to another. Any one of the sections
might be discarded without detriment to the others; and the order of
them might be rearranged. Plays, as well as novels, have been
constructed in this inorganic way,--for example, Molière's "L'Etourdi"
and "Les Facheux." If the actors, in performing either of these plays,
should omit one or two units of the sausage-string of incidents, the
audience would not become aware of any gap in structure. Yet a story
built in this straightforward and successive way may give a vast
impression of the shifting maze of life. Mr. Kipling's "Kim," which is
picaresque in structure, shows us nearly every aspect of the
labyrinthine life of India. He selects a healthy and normal, but not a
clever, boy, and allows all India to happen to him. The book is
without beginning and without end; but its very lack of neatness and
compactness of plan contributes to the general impression it gives of
India's immensity.
=Definition of Plot.=--But a simple series of events arranged along a
single strand of causation, or a succession of several series of this
kind strung along one after the other, may not properly be called a
plot. The word _plot_ signifies a weaving together; and a weaving
together presupposes the coexistence of more than one strand. The
simplest form of plot, properly so called, is a weaving together of
two distinct series of events; and the simplest way of weaving them
together is by so devising them that, though they may be widely
separate at their beginnings, they progress, each in its own way,
toward a common culmination,--a single momentous event which stands
therefore at the apex of each series. This event is the knot which
ties together the two strands of causation. Thus, in "Silas Marner,"
the culminating event, which is the redemption of Marner from a
misanthropic aloofness from life, through the influence of Eppie, a
child in need of love, is led up to by two distinct series of events,
of which it forms the knot. The one series, which concerns itself with
Marner, may be traced back to the unmerited wrong which he suffered in
his youth; and the other series, which concerns itself with Eppie, may
be traced back to the clandestine marriage of Eppie's father, Godfrey
Cass. The initial event of one series has no immediate logical
relation to the initial event of the other; but each series, as it
progresses, approaches nearer and nearer to the other, until they meet
and blend.
=Complication of the Network.=--A type of plot more elaborate than
this may be devised by leading up to the culmination along three or
more distinct lines of causation, instead of merely two. In the "Tale
of Two Cities," Sydney Carton's voluntary death upon the scaffold
stands at the apex of several series of events. And a plot may be
still further complicated by tying the strands together at other
points beside the culmination. In "The Merchant of Venice," the two
chief series of events are firmly knotted in the trial scene, when
Shylock is circumvented by Portia; but they are also tied together,
though less firmly, at the very outset of the play, when Antonio
borrows from Shylock the money which makes it possible for Bassanio to
woo and win the Lady of Belmont. Furthermore, any event in one of the
main strands of causation may stand at the culmination of a minor
strand, and thus may form a little knot in the general network of the
plot. In the same play, the minor strand of the elopement of Lorenzo
and Jessica attains its culmination in a scene which stands only
midway along the progress of the two main strands, that of the bond
and that of the caskets, toward their common result in the defeat of
Shylock.
=The Major Knot.=--But however intricately woven a plot may be, and
however many minor knots may tie together the various strands which
enter into it, there is almost always one point of greatest
complication, one big knot which ties together all the strands at
once, and stands as the common culmination of all the series, major
and minor. The story concerns itself chiefly with telling the reader
how the major knot came to be tied; but in a plot of any complexity,
the reader naturally desires to be told how the knot became untied
again. Therefore this point of greatest complication, this culmination
of all the strands of causation which are woven in the plot, this
objective point of the entire narrative, is seldom set at the very end
of a story, but usually at a point about three quarters of the way
from the beginning to the end. The first three quarters of the story,
speaking roughly, exhibit the antecedent causes of the major knot; and
the last quarter of the story exhibits its subsequent effects. A plot,
therefore, in its general aspects, may be figured as a complication
followed by an explication, a tying followed by an untying, or (to say
the same thing in French words which are perhaps more connotative) a
_nouement_ followed by a _dénouement_. The events in the _dénouement_
bear a closer logical relation to each other than the events in the
_nouement_, because all of them have a common cause in the major knot,
whereas the major knot is the ultimate effect of several distinct
series of causes which were quite separate one from another at the
time when the _nouement_ was begun. For this reason the _dénouement_
shows usually a more hurried movement than the _nouement_--one event
treading on another's heels.
="Beginning, Middle, and End."=--Undoubtedly it was this threefold
aspect of a plot--1. _The Complication_; 2. _The Major Knot_; 3. _The
Explication_--which Aristotle had in mind when he stated that every
story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. These words were
not intended to connote a quantitative equality. What Aristotle called
the "middle" may, in a modern novel, be stated in a single page, and
is much more likely to stand near the close of the book than at the
centre. But everything that comes after it, in what Aristotle called
the "end," should be an effect of which it is the cause; and
everything that comes before it, in what Aristotle called the
"beginning," should be, directly or indirectly, a cause of which it is
the effect. Only under these conditions will the plot be, as Aristotle
said it should be, an organic whole. Only in this way can it conform
to the principle of unity, which is the first principle of all
artistic endeavor.
=The Sub-Plot.=--Bearing the principle of unity ever in his mind,
Stevenson, in a phrase omitted for the moment in one of the quotations
from "A Humble Remonstrance" set forth at the beginning of this
chapter, advised the fiction-writer to "avoid a sub-plot, unless, as
sometimes in Shakespeare, the sub-plot be a reversion or complement of
the main intrigue." It seems safe to state that a sub-plot is of use
in a novel only for the purpose of tying minor knots in the leading
strands of causation, and should be discarded unless it serves that
purpose. There is no reason, however, why a novel should not tell at
once several stories of equal importance, provided that these stories
be deftly interlinked, as in that masterpiece of plotting, "Our Mutual
Friend." In this novel, the chief expedient which Dickens has employed
to bind his different stories together is to make the same person an
actor in more than one of them, so that a particular event that
happens to him may be at the same time a factor in both one and the
other series of events. Through the skilful use of this expedient,
Dickens has contrived to give his novel unity of plot, in spite of the
diversity of its narrative elements. But on the other hand, in
"Middlemarch," George Eliot has told three stories instead of one. She
has failed to make her plot an organic whole by deftly interweaving
the three strands which she has spun. And therefore this monumental
novel, so great in other ways, is faulty in structure, because it
violates the principle of unity.
=Discursive and Compacted Narratives.=--According to the extent of
complication in the plot, novels may be grouped into two classes,--the
discursive and the compacted. Thackeray wrote novels of the former
type, Hawthorne of the latter. In "Vanity Fair" there are over half a
hundred characters; in "The Scarlet Letter" there are three, or
possibly four. The discursive novel gives a more extensive, and the
compacted novel a more intensive, view of life. English authors for
the most part have tended toward the discursive type, and Continental
authors toward the compacted. The latter type demands a finer and a
firmer art, the former a broader and more catholic outlook on the
world.
=Telling Much or Little of a Story.=--The distinction between the two
types depends chiefly upon how much or how little of his entire story
the author chooses to tell. In actual life, as was stated in a former
chapter, there are no very ends; and it may now be added that also
there are no absolute beginnings. Any event that happens is, in
Whitman's words, "an acme of things accomplished" and "an encloser of
things to be"; and in thinking back along its causes or forward along
its effects, we may continue the series until our thought loses itself
in an eternity. In any narrative, therefore, we are doomed to begin
and end in mid-career; and the question is merely how extended a
section of the entire imaginable and unimaginable series we shall
choose to represent to the reader. For instance, it would be a very
simple matter to trace the composition of Rossetti's "House of Life"
back along a causal series to the birth of a boy in Arezzo in 1304;
for it is hardly likely that Rossetti would have written a cycle of
love sonnets if many other poets, such as Shakespeare and Ronsard, had
not done so before him; and Shakespeare and Ronsard, as Sir Sidney Lee
has proved, were literary legatees of Petrarch, the aforesaid native
of Arezzo. And yet, if we were to tell the story of how Rossetti's
sonnets came to be composed, it is doubtful if we should go further
back in time than the occasion when his friend Deverell introduced him
to the beautiful daughter of a Sheffield cutler who became the
immediate inspiration of his poetry of love.
Dickens, in many novels, of which "David Copperfield" may be taken
as an example, has chosen to tell the entire life-story of his hero
from birth up to maturity. But other novelists, like George
Meredith in "The Egoist," have chosen to represent events that
pass, for the most part, in one place, and in an exceedingly short
stretch of time. It is by no means certain that Meredith does not know
as much about the boyhood and youth of Sir Willoughby Patterne as
Dickens knew about the early years of David Copperfield; but he has
chosen to compact his novel by presenting only a brief series of
events which exhibit his hero at maturity. Surely Turgénieff, after
writing out that _dossier_ of each of his characters to which Henry
James referred, must have known a great many events in their lives
which he chose to omit from his finished novel. It is interesting to
imagine the sort of plot that George Eliot would have built out of
the materials of "The Scarlet Letter." Probably she would have begun
the narrative in England at the time when Hester was a young girl.
She would have set forth the meeting of Hester and Chillingworth
and would have analyzed the causes culminating in their marriage.
Then she would have taken the couple overseas to the colony of
Massachusetts. Here Hester would have met Arthur Dimmesdale; and
George Eliot would have expended all her powers as an analyst of
life in tracing the sweet thoughts and imperious desires that led the
lovers to the dolorous pass. The fall of Hester would have been the
major knot in George Eliot's entire narrative. It would have stood at
the culmination of the _nouement_ of her plot: the subsequent
events would have been merely steps in the _dénouement_. Yet the
fall of Hester was already a thing of the past at the outset of
the story that Hawthorne chose to represent. He was interested only in
the after-effects of Hester's sin upon herself and her lover and
her husband. The major knot, or culmination, of his plot was therefore
the revelation of the scarlet letter,--a scene which would have been
only an incident in George Eliot's _dénouement_. It will be seen from
this that any story which is extended in its implications may offer a
novelist materials for any one of several plot-structures, according
to whichever section of the entire story happens most to interest his
mind.
It will be seen, also, that much of the entire story must, in any
case, remain unwritten. A plot is not only, as Stevenson stated, a
simplification of life; it is also a further simplification of the
train of events which, in simplifying life, the novelist has first
imagined. The entire story, with all its implications, is selected
from life; and the plot is then selected from the entire story. Often
a novelist may suggest as much through deliberately omitting from his
plot certain events in his imagined story as he could suggest by
representing them. Perhaps the most powerful character in George
Meredith's "Evan Harrington" is the great Mel, whose death is
announced in the very first sentence of the novel. Hawthorne, in "The
Marble Faun," never clears away the mystery of Miriam's shadowy
pursuer, nor tells us what became of Hilda when she disappeared for a
time from the sight and knowledge of her friends.
=Where to Begin a Story.=--After the novelist has selected from his
entire story the materials he means to represent, and has patterned
these materials into a plot, he enjoys considerable liberty in regard
to the point at which he may commence his narrative. He may begin at
the beginning of one or another of his main strands of causation, as
Scott usually does; or he may adopt the Homeric device, commended by
Horace, of plunging into the midst of his plot and working his way
back only afterward to its beginning. In the first chapter of
"Pendennis," the hero is seventeen years old; the second chapter
narrates the marriage of his father and mother, and his own birth and
boyhood; and at the outset of the third chapter he is only sixteen
years of age.
=Logical Sequence and Chronological Succession.=--It is obvious that,
so long as the novelist represents his events in logical sequence, it
is not at all necessary that he should present them in chronological
succession. Stories may be told backward through time as well as
forward. Thackeray often begins a chapter with an event that happened
one day, and ends it with an event that happened several days before;
he works his way backward from effects to causes, instead of forward
from causes to effects. In carrying on a plot which is woven out of
several strands, it is hardly ever possible to represent events in
uninterrupted chronological succession, even when the author
consistently works forward from causes to effects; for after he has
pursued one strand of his plot to a certain point in time, he is
obliged to turn backward several days or weeks, or possibly a longer
period, to pick up another strand and carry it forward to the same
point in time at which he left the first. Retrogression in time,
therefore, is frequently not only permissible but necessary. But it is
only common-sensible to state that chronological sequence should be
sacrificed merely for the sake of making clear the logical relation of
events; and whenever juggling with chronology tends to obscure instead
of clarify that logical relation, it is evidence of an error of
judgment on the part of the narrator. Turgénieff is often guilty of
this error of judgment. He has a disconcerting habit of bringing a new
character into the scene which stands for the moment before the eye of
the reader, and then turning the narrative backward several years in
order to recount the past life of the newcomer. Frequently, before
this parenthetic recital is completed, the reader has forgotten the
scene from which the author turned to the digression.
=Tying and Untying.=--In most plots, as has been stated, the
_nouement_ is more significant than the _dénouement_, and the causes
leading to the tying of the major knot are more interesting than the
effects traced during the process of untying it. This is the reason
why the culmination is usually set well along toward the conclusion of
the story. Sometimes even, when the major knot has been tied with a
Gordian intricacy, the author sets it at the very end of his
narrative, and suddenly cuts it instead of carefully untying it. But
there is no absolutely necessary reason why it should stand at the
end, or, as is more frequently the case, at a point about three
quarters through the story. It may even be set at the very beginning;
and the narrative may concern itself entirely with an elaborate
_dénouement_. This is the case, for example, in the detective story,
where a very intricate knot is assumed at the outset, and the
narrative proceeds to exhibit the prowess of the detective-hero in
untying it.
=Transition to the Next Chapter.=--A well-constructed plot, like any
other sort of well-articulated pattern, is interesting in itself; and
certain novels and short-stories, like Wilkie Collins' "Moonstone" and
Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue," maintain their interest almost
through the element of plot alone. But since the purpose of fiction is
to represent reality, a story will fail of the highest effect unless
the people acting in its pattern of events produce upon the reader the
illusion of living human beings. We must therefore turn our attention
next to a study of the element of character.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. How may unity be best attained in narrative?
2. Distinguish between the analytic and synthetic methods of
construction.
3. Distinguish between positive and negative events.
4. Explain the pattern of picaresque romance.
5. What are the essential phases of a plot?
6. Explain the meaning of _nouement_ and _dénouement_.
7. Must a story always follow the order of chronology?
8. At what point in the exposition of a plot is the major knot most
usually found? What is the logical reason for this usual position?
SUGGESTED READING
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON: "A Humble Remonstrance."
BLISS PERRY: "A Study of Prose Fiction"--Chapter VI, on "The Plot."
O. HENRY: "Roads of Destiny."--The plotting of this story illustrates
in practice most of the important points expounded in this chapter.