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Lecture 2
PLOT AND PLOT STRUCTURE
Structure of a literary work:
ü Books
ü Volumes
ü Parts
ü Chapters
ü Paragraphs
ü Cantos
ü Stanzas
ü Lines
ü Acts
ü Scenes
ü Episodes
Architectonics – the principle of structure andgoverning design in an artistic work, as distinct from its texture or stylistic execution.
Plot
n The element you will notice first and remember the longest
n It’s the pattern of actions, events, and situations, used expressively by the writer to create suspense, sadness, humor, excitement, etc.
n Can be simple or complex
n Emphasizes the relationships between the characters, events, and situations.
n Contains the conflict
n Diagram:
PLOT: The structure and relationship of actions and events in a work of fiction. In order for a plot to begin, some sort of catalyst is necessary. While the temporal order of events in the work constitutes the "story," we are speaking of plot rather than story as soon as we look at how these events relate to one another and how they are rendered and organized so as to achieve their particular effects.
Simple definition: PLOT - the sequence in which the author arranges events in
a story; plan, design, scheme or pattern of events in a play or a work of fiction. It’s a unity of action; an artistic whole. These actions are ordered and rendered towards achieving particular emotional and artistic effects. It often includes the exposition, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the resolution. The plot may have a protagonist who is opposed by antagonist, creating what is called, conflict. A plot may include flashback or foreshadowing, or it may include a subplot which is a mirror image of the main plot. For example, in Shakespeare's, "King Lear," the relationship between the Earl of Gloucester and his sons mirrors the relationship between Lear and his daughters.
Plot and Narrative
Ø Compare: 1. The king died and the queen died.
2. The king died and then the queen died of grief.
3. The queen died, no one knew why, until it was discovered that it was through grief at the death of the king.
Plot movement and meaning
ü Psychological movement of plot (modernist fiction; “The Story of an Hour”);
ü Physical movement of plot;
ü Every event in the plot is always suggestive;
ü Plot development is based on Conflict (several conflicts).
Elements of plot structure. Freytag’s triangle:
ü Exposition – information at the beginning of the plot about the characters, setting and some background of previous events;
e.g. In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Prospero recounts to Miranda the story of
his having been betrayed by his brother and cast away on an island.
e.g.
ü Initiating action (“ point of attack ”) – the event or events in a plot which bring about a state of conflict and tension; intrigue plot - the dramatic representation of how two young lovers, often with the assistance of a maidservant or friend, foil the blocking agent represented by a parent, priest, or guardian;
ü Complications (Rising action) – action before the climax; peripeteia/reversals –(Greek for "sudden change"): The sudden reversal of fortune in a story, play, or any narrative in which there is an observable change in direction. In tragedy, this is often a change from stability and happiness toward the destruction or downfall of the protagonist.
ü Climax – a point of great intensity, culminating moment.
Anticlimax – a sudden effect of banality, either intentional or unintentional; B.Johnson: “A sentence in which the last part expresses something lower than the first”. A high point of excitement is not achieved, or the seriousness of a literary work is dissipated by a comical, digressive, meaningless or boring development. It leads to bathos, comic effect. A drop, often sudden and unexpected, from a dignified or important idea or situation to one that is trivial or humorous. Also a sudden descent from something sublime to something ridiculous. In fiction and drama, this refers to action that is disappointing in contrast to the previous moment of intense interest. In rhetoric, the effect is frequently intentional and comic. For example: "Usama Bin Laden: Wanted for Crimes of War, Terrorism, Murder, Conspiracy, and Nefarious Parking Practices."
E. g. Shakespeare’s Macbeth – digressive speeches of the porter just after the murder of Duncan (Act III).
E.g. A Pope. The Rape of the Lock:
Whether the Nymph shall break Diana’s law,
Or some frail china jar receive a flaw,
Or stain her honour or her new brocade,
Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade,
Or lose her heart or necklace at a ball:
Or whether Heaven has doomed that Shock [her dog] must fall.
ü Falling action – a part following the climax = Resolution; Anagnorisis – discovery – A term used by Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the moment of tragic recognition in which the protagonist realizes some important fact or insight, especially a truth about himself, human nature, or his situation. Aristotle argues that the ideal moment for anagnorisis in a tragedy is the moment of peripeteia, the reversal of fortune. Critics often claim that the moment of tragic recognition is found within a single line of text, in which the tragic hero admits to his lack of insight or asserts the new truth he recognizes. This passage is often called the "line of tragic recognition."
E.g. Oedipus Rex.
E.g. Characteristic of Tragedy, Comedy. Shakespeare’s King Lear; Twelfth Night – When Viola sheds her disguise at the end, Orsino has a sudden and uncomfortable new perspective on events.
ü Resolution – outcome of the climax; Deus ex machine – ‘god out of a machine’: in Greek drama a god was sometimes lowered on to the stage by a piece of machinery if such an intervention was needed to assist or complete the unfolding of the plot. The phrase is often used pejoratively to indicate an unexpected, forced, improbable and unwarranted twist in a plot, merely there apparently because the writer can think of no other way of resolving the situation which has been created (a telltale birthmark, an unexpected inheritance, the discovery of a lost letter, etc.). Improbable coincidences are common in novels with elaborate plots such as Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749) or Dickens’s Bleak House (1852-1853).
ü Denouement – a French word meaning "unknotting" or "unwinding," denouement refers to the outcome or result of a complex situation or sequence of events, an aftermath or resolution that usually occurs near the final stages of the plot. It is the unraveling of the main dramatic complications in a play, novel or other work of literature. In drama, the term is usually applied to tragedies or to comedies with catastrophes in their plot. This resolution usually takes place in the final chapter or scene, after the climax is over. Usually the denouement ends as quickly as the writer can arrange it--for it occurs only after all the conflicts have been resolved.
Patterns in plot development:
ü Suspense – an anxious uncertainty about what is going to happen.
ü Surprise – if what happens violates our expectations (O.Henry’s stories).
ü Ab ovo – from the beginning.
ü In medias res – in the middle of things.
ü Flashback – reversion to previous events.
ü Foreshadowing – later events are prepared for, hinted at.
Presentational sequencing:
ü Linear (straight line narrative);
ü Circular;
ü Complex;
ü Frame structure;
ü Episodic plot structure (like chivalric romances).
ü Double/multiple plots (Shakespeare’s plays).
ü Subplot – a minor or subordinate secondary plot, often involving a deuteragonist's struggles, which takes place simultaneously with a larger plot, usually involving the protagonist. The subplot often echoes or comments upon the direct plot either directly or obliquely. Sometimes two opening subplots merge into a single storyline later in a play or narrative.
E.g. Comic subplot involving Stefano and Trinculo in The Tempest.
ü Shadow/negative plot. In some narratives, specific event sequences or full stories take on (primary) meaning from textually triggered, though not necessarily textually inscribed, antitheses.
E.g. In J. Austin’s Northanger Abbey contains a shadow plot of A. Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho. Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea – shadow plot of J ane Eyre by Ch. Bronte.
Kate Chopin. “The story of an Hour”
William Faulkner. “A Rose for Emily”.
Plot
1. Who is the protagonist of the story? What are the conflicts? Are they physical, intellectual, moral, or emotional? Is the main conflict between sharply differentiated good and evil, or is it more subtle and complex?
2. Does the plot have unity? Are all the episodes relevant to the total meaning or effect of the story? Does each incident grow logically out of the preceding incident and lead naturally to the next? Is the ending happy, unhappy, or indeterminate? Is it fairly achieved?
3. What use does the story make of chance and coincidence? Are these occurrences used to initiate, to complicate, or to resolve the story? How improbable are they?
4. How is suspense created in the story? Is the interest confined to "What happens next?" or are larger concerns involved? Can you find examples of mystery? of dilemma?
5. What use does the story make of surprise? Are the surprises achieved fairly? Do they serve a significant purpose? Do they divert the reader's attention from weaknesses in the story?
6. To what extent is this a "formula" story?
CONFLICT
“…the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about…”
- W. Faulkner
Conflict - the opposition between two characters (such as a protagonist and an
antagonist), between two large groups of people, or between the protagonist and a larger problem such as forces of nature, ideas, public mores, and so on. Conflict may also be completely internal, such as the protagonist struggling with his psychological tendencies (drug addiction, self-destructive behavior, and so on);
William Faulkner famously claimed that the most important literature deals with the subject of "the human heart in conflict with itself."
Conflict is the engine that drives a plot.
Types of External Conflict:
— Man against man:
E.g. Mallory's Le Morte D'arthur, in which King Arthur faces off against his evil son Mordred, each representing civilization and barbarism respectively; W. Shakespeare Othello, W. Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice, E. Bronte Wuthering Heights, W. Golding Lord of the Flies;
Shylock. To bait fish withal: if it feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge! If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
· Man against woman:
E.g. D.H. Lawrence Women in Love; Charlotte Perkins Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper”;
From Women in Love:
There was silence for some moments.
'No,' he said. 'It isn't that. Only - if we are going to know each other, we must pledge ourselves for ever. If we are going to make a relationship, even of friendship, there must be something final and infallible about it.'
There was a clang of mistrust and almost anger in his voice. She did not answer. Her heart was too much contracted. She could not have spoken.
Seeing she was not going to reply, he continued, almost bitterly, giving himself away:
'I can't say it is love I have to offer - and it isn't love I want. It is something much more impersonal and harder - and rarer.'
There was a silence, out of which she said:
'You mean you don't love me?'
She suffered furiously, saying that.
'Yes, if you like to put it like that. Though perhaps that isn't true. I don't know. At any rate, I don't feel the emotion of love for you - no, and I don't want to. Because it gives out in the last issues.'
'Love gives out in the last issues?' she asked, feeling numb to the lips.
'Yes, it does. At the very last, one is alone, beyond the influence of love. There is a real impersonal me, that is beyond love, beyond any emotional relationship. So it is with you. But we want to delude ourselves that love is the root. It isn't. It is only the branches. The root is beyond love, a naked kind of isolation, an isolated me, that does NOT meet and mingle, and never can.'
She watched him with wide, troubled eyes. His face was incandescent in its abstract earnestness.
'And you mean you can't love?' she asked, in trepidation.
'Yes, if you like. I have loved. But there is a beyond, where there is not love.'
She could not submit to this. She felt it swooning over her. But she could not submit.
'But how do you know - if you have never REALLY loved?' she asked.
'It is true, what I say; there is a beyond, in you, in me, which is further than love, beyond the scope, as stars are beyond the scope of vision, some of them.'
'Then there is no love,' cried Ursula.
'Ultimately, no, there is something else. But, ultimately, there IS no love.'
Ursula was given over to this statement for some moments. Then she half rose from her chair, saying, in a final, repellent voice:
'Then let me go home - what am I doing here?'
'There is the door,' he said. 'You are a free agent.'
He was suspended finely and perfectly in this extremity. She hung motionless for some seconds, then she sat down again.
'If there is no love, what is there?' she cried, almost jeering.
'Something,' he said, looking at her, battling with his soul, with all his might.
'What?'
He was silent for a long time, unable to be in communication with her while she was in this state of opposition.
'There is,' he said, in a voice of pure abstraction; 'a final me which is stark and impersonal and beyond responsibility. So there is a final you. And it is there I would want to meet you - not in the emotional, loving plane - but there beyond, where there is no speech and no terms of agreement. There we are two stark, unknown beings, two utterly strange creatures, I would want to approach you, and you me. And there could be no obligation, because there is no standard for action there, because no understanding has been reaped from that plane. It is quite inhuman, - so there can be no calling to book, in any form whatsoever - because one is outside the pale of all that is accepted, and nothing known applies. One can only follow the impulse, taking that which lies in front, and responsible for nothing, asked for nothing, giving nothing, only each taking according to the primal desire.'
Ursula listened to this speech, her mind dumb and almost senseless, what he said was so unexpected and so untoward.
'It is just purely selfish,' she said.
'If it is pure, yes. But it isn't selfish at all. Because I don't KNOW what I want of you. I deliver MYSELF over to the unknown, in coming to you, I am without reserves or defences, stripped entirely, into the unknown. Only there needs the pledge between us, that we will both cast off everything, cast off ourselves even, and cease to be, so that that which is perfectly ourselves can take place in us.'
She pondered along her own line of thought.
'But it is because you love me, that you want me?' she persisted.
'No it isn't. It is because I believe in you - if I DO believe in you.'
'Aren't you sure?' she laughed, suddenly hurt.
He was looking at her steadfastly, scarcely heeding what she said.
'Yes, I must believe in you, or else I shouldn't be here saying this,' he replied. 'But that is all the proof I have. I don't feel any very strong belief at this particular moment.'
She disliked him for this sudden relapse into weariness and faithlessness.
'But don't you think me good-looking?' she persisted, in a mocking voice.
He looked at her, to see if he felt that she was good-looking.
'I don't FEEL that you're good-looking,' he said.
'Not even attractive?' she mocked, bitingly.
He knitted his brows in sudden exasperation.
'Don't you see that it's not a question of visual appreciation in the least,' he cried. 'I don't WANT to see you. I've seen plenty of women, I'm sick and weary of seeing them. I want a woman I don't see.'
'I'm sorry I can't oblige you by being invisible,' she laughed.
From “The Yellow Wallpaper”:
"The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly leave town just now. Of course if you were in any danger, I could and would, but you really are better, dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better, I feel really much easier about you."
"I don't weigh a bit more," said I, "nor as much; and my appetite may be better in the evening when you are here, but it is worse in the morning when you are away!"
****
John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.
John is a physician, and PERHAPS—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see he does not believe I am sick!
And what can one do?
— Man against nature:
From “To Build a Fire”:
But it was all he could do, hold its body encircled in his arms and sit there. He realized that he could not kill the dog. There was no way to do it. With his helpless hands he could neither draw nor hold his sheath-knife nor throttle the animal. He released it, and it plunged wildly away, with tail between its legs, and still snarling. It halted forty feet away and surveyed him curiously, with ears sharply pricked forward. The man looked down at his hands in order to locate them, and found them hanging on the ends of his arms. It struck him as curious that one should have to use his eyes in order to find out where his hands were. He began threshing his arms back and forth, beating the mittened hands against his sides. He did this for five minutes, violently, and his heart pumped enough blood up to the surface to put a stop to his shivering. But no sensation was aroused in the hands. He had an impression that they hung like weights on the ends of his arms, but when he tried to run the impression down, he could not find it.
A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. This fear quickly became poignant as he realized that it was no longer a mere matter of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing his hands and feet, but that it was a matter of life and death with the chances against him. This threw him into a panic, and he turned and ran up the creek-bed along the old, dim trail. The dog joined in behind and kept up with him. He ran blindly, without intention, in fear such as he had never known in his life. Slowly, as he ploughed and floundered through the snow, he began to see things again--the banks of the creek, the old timber-jams, the leafless aspens, and the sky. The running made him feel better. He did not shiver. Maybe, if he ran on, his feet would thaw out; and, anyway, if he ran far enough, he would reach camp and the boys. Without doubt he would lose some fingers and toes and some of his face; but the boys would take care of him, and save the rest of him when he got there. And at the same time there was another thought in his mind that said he would never get to the camp and the boys; that it was too many miles away, that the freezing had too great a start on him, and that he would soon be stiff and dead. This thought he kept in the background and refused to consider. Sometimes it pushed itself forward and demanded to be heard, but he thrust it back and strove to think of other things.
— Man against society:
From Oliver Twist:
Entering by the back way, she tapped softly with the key at one of the cell-doors, and listened. There was no sound within: so she coughed and listened again. Still there was no reply: so she spoke.
"Nolly, dear?" murmured Nancy in a gentle voice; "Nolly?"
There was nobody inside but a miserable shoeless criminal, who had been taken up for playing the flute, and who, the offense against society having been clearly proved, had been very properly committed by Mr. Fang to the House of Correction for one month; with the appropriate and amusing remark that since he had so much breath to spare, it would be more wholesomely expended on the treadmill than in a musical instrument. He made no answer: being occupied in mentally bewailing the loss of the flute, which had been confiscated for the use of the county; so Nancy passed on to the next cell, and knocked there.
"Well!" cried a faint and feeble voice.
"Is there a little boy here?" inquired Nancy, with a preliminary sob.
"No," replied the voice; "God forbid."
This was a vagrant of sixty-five, who was going to prison for (r)not¯ playing the flute; or, in other words, for begging in the streets, and doing nothing for his livelihood. In the next cell, was another man, who was going to the same prison for hawking tin saucepans without a license; thereby doing something for his living, in defiance of the Stamp-office.
— Man against fate, destiny (God, superhuman powers, etc.):
E.g. W. Shakespeare Macbeth, T. Hardy Tess of the d’Urbervilles, E.A. Poe The Fall of the House of Usher, J. C. Oates stories (The Collector of Hearts);
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened - there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind - the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight - my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder - there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters - and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher."
· Man against machine, technology:
E.g. H.G. Wells The Invisible Man, M. Shelley Frankenstein, K. Wilson The Mind Parasites, I. Asimov “True Love”;
See copies.
— One set of values against another set of values:
E.g. W. Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice, W. Golding Lord of the Flies; D. Lodge Nice Work; D. Lodge Thinks.
From Thinks…:
Types of Internal Conflict:
Centuries before Sigmund Freud invited the first patient to lie on the couch, psychology was already a part of literature. Writers have always been aware of the contradictory inner emotions and impulses everyone experiences. Internal conflicts are also called Man vs. self. It's anything emotional or mental where the character is essential, both protagonist and antagonist.
· Passions/desires vs duties, awareness of class or morality, or social mores:
· Two opposing feelings:
E.g. E. Bronte Wuthering Heights; Th. Dreiser An American Tragedy; D.H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers;
From Wuthering Heigh ts:
'May she wake in torment!' he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. 'Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not THERE - not in heaven - not perished - where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer - I repeat it till my tongue stiffens - Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you - haunt me, then! The murdered DO haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts HAVE wandered on earth. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only DO not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I CANNOT live without my life! I CANNOT live without my soul!'
· Determination and conscience:
E.g. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," in which the protagonist ends up struggling with his own guilt after committing a murder;
From “The Tell-Tale Heart”:
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
…
Yet the sound increased—and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound—much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath—and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly—more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men—but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed—I raved—I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder—louder—louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God!—no, no! They heard!—they suspected!—they knew!—they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now—again!—hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!
“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks! here, here!—It is the beating of his hideous heart!”
· Conflict of certainty and doubt:
E.g. W. Shakespeare Hamlet; D.H. Lawrence J. Barnes “The Story of Mats Israelson”;
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
· Two opposing features of character (alter ego, split identity, true self and mask):
R.L. Stevenson Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; W.Faulkner Light in August;
Conflict is most often expressed through action or dialog and description. The best writers can inject lots of conflict into just a few words.
In complex works of literature, multiple conflicts may occur at once. For instance, in Shakespeare's Othello, one level of conflict is the unseen struggle between Othello and the machinations of Iago, who seeks to destroy him. Another level of conflict is Othello's struggle with his own jealous insecurities and his suspicions that Desdemona is cheating on him.
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