STARTING POINT AND FIRST PROCESSES. “It so happens in the case of ‘The
Path of Glory’ that I can give you exactly the germinal idea from
which the story sprang. Three months before I wrote it a friend put
into my hand two letters. The first was written by Piatt Andrew of The
American Ambulance at Paris and gave the full details of a wonderful
funeral accorded a young American volunteer driver who was killed on
an early trip; the second was the last personal letter of the young
man to his family--the letter of a young man of education and breeding
and in no way similar to the Nat letter of my story save as they both
expressed a fundamental human longing. Copies were being made and I was
offered some. I carried mine home and laid them by. But they haunted
me. ‘There’s a story there,’ I thought. However, I didn’t seem to get
a story--at once. Nevertheless my mind played with the letters. That
funeral! The story of course lay there, but how to set it off, enhance
it properly. One day thinking it over idly--I have a vagabond mind and
never attack a problem in any logical fashion--the solution dawned
quite suddenly. It would be best set off by contrast, of course, with
some unthinkably shabby funeral, and would receive its greatest force
by being reconstructed through the minds of a people to whom a funeral
is a precious event.”--_Mary Brecht Pulver._
After a statement to the effect that she knows “people to whom the
trappings and ceremonials of death take on a sense of privilege,” Mrs.
Pulver continues:
“Just here I got some paper and a pencil and wrote the story. Or rather
it wrote itself--as my stories usually do. When I began describing
the lonely farm in which my people lived I had not the least idea who
the people were--how many, what sex, age, race, or previous condition
of servitude. There was a family in that house. A family preferably in
hard luck. Then at the foot of the hill I saw a lame boy driving a cow.
I walked along with him--and recognizing him as Luke, and acquainting
myself with his ideas and frame of mind, I knew of course who his
people were, how many, their habits, their names--‘all’s to it,’ as
Luke would have said.
“And so I told their story--and about how one of them went to France
and got killed. And how indirectly he helped them out of their hard
luck. That is all there was to ‘The Path of Glory.’”
PLOT. Note, first, that since the presentation is consistently from
Luke’s angle, the plot events are given in chronological order _for
him_; but that from the point of view of actual occurrence they are
presented with some inversion. (For example, the experience of Mrs.
Haynes in the town precedes her summary to Luke.) In this respect, the
author--perhaps unconsciously--shows ability to mass plot material to
best advantage through artistic adherence to one angle of narration.
Many short-story writers appear to understand this principle, yet fail
to master it.
_Initial Impulse_: The story impulse lies, dormant, in the business
of Nat’s funeral. Where does it become active?
_Main Steps in Action_: Nat’s visit home. A direct forecast of the
climax lies in the reason for his going to Europe. Another important
stage is the death and burial of Father Haynes, “Paw.”
_Dramatic Climax_: The combination of “Paw’s” home-made burial
and Nat’s death. The two come near together and constitute the
lowest turn of the Haynes wheel of fortune. In Nat’s death lies the
possibility for change. (In the presentation of the plot, this
climax is _reported_ through the letter, the reception of which is,
in itself, a step toward the _climax of action_.)
_Steps toward the Climax of Action_: The letter telling of Nat’s
death. Mrs. Haynes’s stony grief. The second letter; Nat’s funeral
and the _croix de guerre_. “Maw” awakes; she is “going downtown.” She
shows the letter, and soon understands that Nat has given glory to
Stony Brook. The letter is to be published. It is to be read aloud
at the schoolhouse and Nat’s story retold. There will be a memorial
service at the churches. There will be a big public service in the
Town Hall. (Other details make the change of fortune explicit and
complete.)
_Climax of Action_: “Maw” returns home, rehabilitated, and rehearses
the day’s experience to Luke. He recognizes that Nat has done
“somethin’ big for us all.”
CHARACTERS. If one test of the “short-story” is that no character
should enter who does not assist in the action, will this story stand
it? What, for example, is Tom’s part? Would you give him up? Is it
permissible to introduce characters to enrich the action? There is no
question about the value from a literary consideration.
The part of each main character is well-defined. Luke, self-conscious,
lame and sensitive, offers the medium through whom the story is told.
“Maw” suffers; it is she to whom the turns of fortune mean most; she
is the chief character. “Paw” is the cause of the Haynes status in the
community. Nat, the prodigal, is the one through whom rehabilitation
comes.
The personalities that enrich the action are: 1. Clem, his wife, and
S’norta. They do so (a) by intensifying “Maw’s” sense of poverty, (b)
by furnishing contrast in worldly goods and in character; 2. Tom. His
misfortune enhances the wretchedness of the main actors, and the
probability of his being made sound in mind emphasizes their changed
fortunes. 3. Background characters. All, practically, whom Mrs. Haynes
meets on her famous day in the town.
Apply to these primary and secondary characters the tests suggested in
previous exercises. Do they _live_?
SETTING. What does “Stony Brook, New York” suggest by way of physical
and spiritual conditions? How is the locality an integral part of the
atmosphere?
DETAILS. The “human appeal” in this narrative will make it hard for
any reader, however crusty, to refrain from tears or an awakened sense
of pity. By what measures has the author brought about this desired
result? The list should be long. After you have made it, see how far
you can generalize from it as to provocation of emotional reaction.
“What I like in reading a story,” Mrs. Pulver says, “is a simple
gracious English, a shade whimsical perhaps, that concerns itself
with a situation and people who palpitate, in whose fate you become
sincerely interested, as humans, not merely a clever bit of literary
bridge. And the whole must be laced for me with a dash of humor, that
tender fun-poking that will save the written human appeal from being
heart-throb stuff or the handiwork of a sob-sister.”
Some examples of contrast have already been offered. Point out others,
even stronger.
In Division II (pages 421-425) the focus is on Nat, the action
seemingly held up, meanwhile. Did you, in reading, feel this long delay
to be irksome, or were you compensated by the matter itself and the
vision of its promise?
In Division IV, what intensifying value has the rain?
In Division V, what intensifying value has the first sentence?--“It was
dusk when Maw came back; dusk of a clear day, with a rosy sunset off
behind the hills.”
GENERAL. Mary Brecht Pulver declares she is afraid she is that
“hooted-at and disbelieved-in thing,” an inspirational writer. “Given a
major premise, an argument, some slight flash of idea, for a chart and
I am ready to sail over the smooth white main. My crew will come to me
ready named, ready behavioured, and will navigate my bark for me....
All of my stories are pictures. They unroll like a cinema in colors
just off my left shoulder. They move so fast my wrist aches to keep up
with them. I never rewrite anything unless an editor requests it. My
first draft is the only one. As you see, this is not intellectual but
emotional work. I can do only a thousand words at a sitting because of
the emotional strain. This seems deplorable, considering the product
but it seems necessary. Like the Jap in the legend, I must mix a little
blood with my clay to get any kind of pottery.”
At first, this passage would seem to say, “There’s no use trying to
learn to write.” And it may be urged here that the young fiction
aspirant who feels _impelled_ to create, and according to his own bent,
should give his genius a full chance. Any student may glean this,
however, from the words of Mrs. Pulver: Without emotion of one’s own,
success is impossible.