Section I plot and plot structure theoretical preliminaries

The impact of a literary work, as it has already been stated, depends on all its elements. Among them plot and plot structure play an important role.

The plot is a series of interlinked events in which the characters of the story participate. The events are arranged in a definite sequence to catch and hold the reader's interest. The writer arranges the events, ordering them as he sees fit.

Most stories and novels have plots. But there are some which have no plots. To these belong stories and poems describing nature. It is difficult to trace the plots in the so-called "novels of ideas" and stories presenting the stream of consciousness, since the thoughts of the character are set down as they occur regardless of their logic. Yet one should bear in mind that the events in a plot need not always involve physical movement, the movement may be psychological. In the latter case the plot reveals the dynamics in the psychological state of a character.

Every plot is a series of meaningful events. They are meaningful in the sense that the writer does not follow all the events in which the characters of his story would participate in real life during the span of time covered by the story. He selects the events which are meaningful to the message contained in the story, and to characterization, i. e. he chooses those that serve to reveal certain features of the characters. their motives and morals. Therefore, each event in the story is always logically related to the message, the theme, the conflict, and is psychologically related to the development of the characters within the story. Sometimes the logical, and sometimes the psychological aspect may be the more obvious.

Since the writer selects events that have special meaning in relation to the message of the story, every event in the plot is always suggestive. And this is what the reader should keep in mind. He should discover the role the events of the story play in characterization and in conveying the message.

Any plot involves repetition, but it does not mean mechanical repetition. A plot is comprised of a variety of events, each of which recalls the reader, directly or indirectly, to the central problem. No matter how casual each event might seem to be at first glance, it generally returns the reader to the main problem of the story.

The plot of any story always involves character and conflict. They imply each other. Conflict in fiction is the opposition (or struggle) between forces or characters. Conflicts are classified into external and internal conflicts.

Different types of external conflicts are usually termed in the following way:

1. Man against man, when the plot is based on the opposition between two or more people, as in The Roads We Take by O'Henry.

2. Man against nature (the sea, the desert, the frozen North or wild beasts). The conflict in The Old Man and the Sea by F. Hemingway, The Hunter by J. Aldridge, or the scientist's effort to discover the secrets of nature involve a conflict between man and nature.

3. Man against society or man against the established order in the society, when the individual fights his social environment openly, or when there is a conflict between the individual and the established order: a conflict with poverty, racial hostility, injustice, exploitation, inequality.

4. The conflict between one set of values against another set of values. These sets of values may be supported by two groups or two worlds in opposition. For example, the conflict in The Fall of Edward Barnard by S. Maugham is between ambition and prosperity, on the one hand, and truth, beauty and goodness, on the other.

Internal conflicts, often termed as "man against himself", take place within one character. The internal conflict is localized in the inner world of the character and is rendered through his thoughts, feelings, intellectual processes. Here the character is torn between opposing features of his personality. For example, the tragedy of Soames Forsyte in The Man of Property is his conflict with himself: the sense of property, on the one hand, and a keen sense of beauty, on the other. The internal conflict within an individual often involves a struggle of his sense of duty against self-interest.

The plot of a story may be based on several conflicts of different types, it may involve both an internal and an external conflict.

Conflicts in fiction are suggested by contradictions in reality. On the other hand, conflicts in fiction are affected by the writer's outlook, by his personality and his view of certain types of people, problems and social phenomena. The writer observes reality and the fates, problems, difficulties of his fellow creatures inspire him to write. It is reality that he reflects in his work, but he does it from his own standpoint, as he sees and understands it. Therefore, when evaluating a literary work one should take into account not only the types of human nature and class contradictions described, but also the standpoint fl­are viewed from.

The events of the plot are generally localized, i. e. they are set in a particular place and lime. The place and time of the actions of a story (or novel) form the setting. For the setting the writer selects the relevant detail which would suggest the whole scene. In some stories, the setting is scarcely noticeable, in others it plays a very important role. The functions of the setting may vary.

1. The setting, especially description of nature, helps lo evoke the necessary atmosphere (or mood), appropriate to the general intention of the story. It may be an atmosphere of gloom and foreboding as in Rain by S. Maugham, or a mysterious atmosphere as in The Oval Portrait by E. A. Poe.

2. The setting may reinforce characterization by either paralleling or contrasting the actions. Thus in S. Maugham's story Rain the description of the unceasing rain parallels the actions of Mr. Davidson. The setting here suggests similarity between his actions and the merciless rain.

3. The setting may be a reflection of the inner state of a character, as in Jane Eyre by Ch. Bronte. The setting reflects remarkably well the feelings that Jane experiences. The function of the setting in King Lear by W. Shakespeare is identical. The raging storm reflects King Lear's emotional slate.

4 The setting may place the character in a recognizable realistic environment. Such a setting may include geographical names and allusions to historical events. A setting, which is realistic and which is rendered vividly, tends to increase the credibility of the whole plot. It means that if the reader accepts the setting as real, he tends to accept the inhabitants of the setting, i. e. the characters and their actions, more readily.

5. In fiction the setting, especially domestic interiors, may serve to reveal certain features of the character. "A man's house is an extension of himself. Describe it and you have described him ..." Such settings may be viewed as "metonymic, or metaphoric, expressions of Character"

6. When the theme and the main problem involves the conflict between man and nature, the setting becomes in effect the chief antagonist whom the hero must overcome, as in The Old Man and the Sea by E. Hemingway.

The setting in a story may perform either one or several functions simultaneously. It should be also noted that characters, actions, conflict and setting work together to accomplish the author's purpose.

The setting is generally established at the beginning of the story, in the exposition, which is the first component of plot structure.

In the exposition the writer introduces the theme, the characters and establishes the setting. The exposition, therefore, contains the necessary preliminaries to the events of the plot, casts light on the circumstances influencing the development of characters and supplies some information on either all or some of the following questions: Who? What? Where? When?

The exposition may be compressed into one sentence or extended into several paragraphs. Fairy tales usually begin with an extended exposition that provides the reader with exhaustive information about when and where the events are set, who the characters are and what the story is about. Such is the exposition in The Magic Fish-bone by Ch. Dickens:

"There was once a king, and he had a queen; and he was the manliest of his sex, and she was the loveliest of hers. The king was, in his private profession, under government. The queen's father had been a medical man out of town.

They had nineteen children, and were always having more. Seventeen of these children took care of the baby; and Alicia, the eldest, took care of them all. Their ages varied from seven years to seven months."

If the character and backgrounds are not special, not much exposition is required. Such is the case in D. Parker's story Arrangement in Black and While. The characters and the setting are not specified. What matters in this story is the state and behaviour of the protagonist, who despite her efforts fails to conceal her racial prejudice. There may even be no exposition at all and the descriptions of the setting may be scattered in the other structural components of the story. The reader has to collect the directly and indirectly expressed information about the characters and the setting, gradually constructing the world of the story himself while he reads on. Such is the case in The Lady’s Maid by K. Mansfield.

The second structural component which follows the exposition is complications. Complications generally involve actions, though they might involve thoughts and feelings as well. As a rule, this structural component consists of several events (or moments of complications).

They become tenser as the plot moves toward the moment of deci­sion — the climax. Such a direct scaling upwards in the moments of complications occurs in The Cop and the Anthem by O'Henry. In some stories there may be a good deal of fluctuation in intensity among the moments of complications, although the general tendency is upward. Each of these moments is related to the theme of the story, the message or to the development of characters.

The third structural component is the climax. The climax is the key event, the crucial moment of the story. It is often referred to as the moment of illumination for the whole story, as it is the moment when the relationship among the events becomes clear, when their role in the development of characters is clarified, and when the story is seen to have a structure. In The Cop and the Anthem, for example, the climax is Soapy's arrest. The denouement (or resolution) is the fourth structural component or the plot. The denouement is the unwinding of the actions: it includes the event, or events, in the story immediately following the climax and bringing the actions to an end. It is the point at which the fate of the main character is clarified. The denouement suggests to the reader certain crucial conclusions.

A story may have no denouement. By leaving it out the author achieves a certain effect — he invites the reader to reflect on all the circumstances that accompanied the character of the story and to imagine the outcome of all the events himself. Such is the case m The Cop and the Anthem.

The usual order in which the components of plot structure occur is as follows: exposition, complications, climax and denouement. Novels may have two more components of plot structure: the prologue and the epilogue (see, for example, Angel Pavement by J. Priestley). The prologue contains facts from beyond the past of the story, the epilogue contains additional facts about the future of the characters if it is not made clear enough in the denouement.

Sometimes the author rearranges the components of plot structure. The story then begins with complications, or even with the denouement. Any shift in the organization of the plot structure affects the total response of the reader. For example. The Apple Tree by J. Galsworthy begins with the denouement. Ashurst, an elderly man, and his wife Stella on their silver wedding anniversary stop at crossroads and admire the beauty of spring nature; they see a suicide's grave; Ashurst seems to recognize the beautiful landscape, it reminds him of an event in his youth. “…And then a sudden ache beset his heart; he had stumbled on just one of those past moments in life, whose beauty and rapture he had tailed to arrest, whose wings had fluttered away into the unknown: he had stumbled on a buried memory, a wild sweet time, swiftly choked and ended. And this is what he remembered..." Then occurs a flashback to the past — Ashurst, twenty-six years ago, a college student, is on a tramp tour in the countryside; he meets Megan, a beautiful country girl and falls in love with her. That is followed by his decision to marry her and take her home to London, then his meeting with Stella, his internal conflict (whether to give up Stella and return to Megan, or to desert Megan for Stella), his final decision to marry Stella. All these events form the complications. The climax of the story returns the reader from Ashurst's recollections of his youth to the crossroads, where an old man who passes by tells him that the grave under the apple tree is that of a young girl, who had committed suici­de – “ 'tis wonderful, it seems,” he added slowly “what maids'll do for love. She had a lovin' heart; I guess 'twas broken. But us knew nothing.' This is the moment of illumination. At this moment the reader realizes why Ashurst was struck by the familiarity of the landscape. The reader understands the outcome of Megan's tragic love. It becomes clear that the event described at the beginning of the story is the denouement, that Ashurst never returned to Megan, he married Stella, and that the suicide's grave is Megan's paw.

The denouement placed at the beginning of the story gives a melancholy ring to all the events of the story from the very start, creates a pensive mood, a cheerless atmosphere, increases suspense (the state of uncertainty and expectation), sharpens the reader's interest. The reader is puzzled by the suicide's grave. Whose grave can it be? And what has Ashurst got to do with it? The plot of the story is thus constructed in a circular pattern, as the end of the story returns the reader to the beginning,

Therefore, any rearrangement of the components or plot structure is meaningful. It may affect the atmosphere and introduce the necessary mood. It may increase the tension and the reader’s suspense, and in this way affect the reader's emotional response to the story.

We may generalize by saying that there is a variety of plot structure techniques. A story may have

1. a straight line narrative presentation, when the events are arranged as they occur, in chronological order;

2. a complex narrative structure, when the events are not arranged in chronological order and when there are flashbacks to past events;

3. a circular pattern, when the closing event in the story returns the reader to the introductory part;

4. a frame structure, when there is a story within a story. The two stories contrast or parallel.

It should also be added that the intensity of the impression depends on presentational sequencing, i e. the order in which the writer presents the information included into the story. Hence presentational sequencing is interlinked with plot structure.

The writer may withhold some information and keep the reader guessing. The reader will then be uncertain of some things or suspect certain facts. A number of questions may arise, the answers to which may either follow rapidly or emerge gradually in the course of the narrative. Most stories contain an enigma, which is an important factor in story-telling. Some stories contain a whole series of enigmas. Mistaken Identity by M. Twain is built round one major enigma: What caused the sudden change in the attitude towards the narrator and his companion? By holding back the fact that the narrator was taken for a general until the very end of the story M. Twain builds suspense which constantly mounts in the course of the story. The withholding of information until the appropriate time is called retardation. Retardation is a widely used literary technique of presentational sequencing. Retardation heightens suspense.

The flashback technique is another device of presentational sequencing. A flashback is a scene of the past inserted into the narrative. For example, the narrative in The Lady's Maid contains flashbacks to Ellen's childhood and youth.

Foreshadowing is a look towards the future, a remark or hint that prepares the reader for what is to follow. This device of presentational sequencing heightens suspense. The title in Mistaken Identity is a case of foreshadowing. It hints at the outcome of the event without revealing its cause and in this way intensifies suspense.

Presentational sequencing may be traced on different levels. It may involve sequencing of information, as shown above. Besides, it may involve sequencing of literary representational forms, such as narration, description, reasoning, direct speech (monologue, dialogue), interior speech, represented speech, quotations, the author's digressions. It may also involve the sequencing of viewpoints in the story, which form the so-called underlying compositional structure of a literary work.