What Is Literature?‖ Is the Main Aim of This Chapter

CHAPTER I LITERATURE AND ITS GENRE

Answering the frequently-asked question ―What is literature?‖ is the main aim of this chapter. Although literature is sometimes defined as anything written, this definition is both too broad and too narrow. While it is true that a housewife can ask the department of Agriculture for ―literature‖ about canning artichokes, surely we can distinguish between literature in the sense of any writing, and literature in the sense of verbal works of art. And, on the other hand, to say that literature must be written and printed is too narrow, because it excludes oral literature, e.g., ballads that are sung and stories that are recited. We can begin saying that literature is (quoting Robert Frost‘s words) a ―performance in words‖. It has in it an element of entertaining display, and surely we expect literature to be in some sense entertaining, or to put it in slightly different items, to afford pleasure. That literature is an adult game, a sort of make- believe, is suggested in some of the words we apply to pieces of literature-―fiction,‖ ―story‖, ―tale‖, ―play‖.

Now, what is it that makes literature pleasant? Without attempting a complete answer, perhaps we can say that a literary work seizes our interest and more or less- at least for a moment- makes the rest of the world fade or vanish. If the writer has done his job well, our attention is focused on the work, and we are in some measure detached from our usual surrounding. Consider, as an analogy, our reaction when we suddenly get a whiff of new-mown hay. We are walking along a road, either fretting about a dozen things or engaged in a pleasant vague reverie, when suddenly we smell the hay. At once we are caught up, keenly interested in this experience, intensely aware of this one thing, a thing that seems complete and satisfying in it. For the moment we forget about the time of day, the dust of the road, the heat of the sun, and we find in this thing which is complete, whole, independent, something that catches us up and delights us. A work of art has this power to catch us up momentarily, and to delight us. Art, it is commonly said, offers truth as well as pleasure. Such a view is at least superficially plausible, but when we begin to think about it, we encounter problems. What‖truth―is there in Oliver Twist? The characters in the novel are fictional; 2 we cannot say that Dickens is giving us a true picture of English history. Look at the short poem by Walter Savage Landor (1775- 1864): There is a flower I wish to wear, But not until first worn by you- Heart‘s-ease__ of all earth‘s flowers most rare; Bring it; and bring enough for two. Is it true that the flower called heart‘s-ease is the earth‘s rarest flower? If we want to know about flowers, hadn‘t we better listen to botanists than to poets? These are big problems, and they have not yet been solved to general satisfaction. Not only literary critics but creative artists themselves have numerous theories about the nature of literature. But most theories of literature can, without much distortion, be put into one of three pigeon-holes which are called ―imitative‖, ―expressive‖ and ―affective‖.

A. The Imitative Theory It holds that art is an imitation of something. In his Poetics, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) says, for example, that a tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious and 3 complete. Because imitation now has negative associations, it is well to think of Aristotle‘s mimesis as not only ―imitation‖ but also ―re-creation‖ or ―re-presentation‖. In an artistic imitation, Aristotle holds, a form is presented in a substance not natural to it. In its simplest form the imitative theory appeals to the naïve: ―How life-like that wax apple is!‖ ―How like a Frenchman that actor looks! But more sophisticated people may ask: ―What is so pleasing about a wax apple or a fake Frenchman? There are plenty of real apples and real Frenchmen for us to look at.‖ Aristotle‘s theory includes such a close copy of nature as a wax apple, but it goes farther. He says that art is superior to history because where history must stick to the facts, art refines nature, showing, one might say, not what happened but what should have happened in a world free from accident. The artist is a sort of greenhouse man, producing not the rose that grows wild, cankered, and stunted, but the rose that has fulfilled all its potential, the rose that is more than any wild rose. The artist, in short, does not imitate servilely; he recreates reality and presents it to us in a fashion in which we see its essence more clearly.

It is only half-true, then to say that Aristotle‘s imitator is a maker of an imitation. (This idea of the artist as a maker, by the way, survives dimly in the word ―playwright‖__ ―wright‖ being a maker, as in ―shipwright‖, and having nothing to do with ―write‖) Because the artist‘s imitation is more than a copy of what is apparent to every eye, his imitation is in some measure a creation. It is imaginative and interpretive; it reflects a special view of reality. The imitative theory often includes the notion that art gives us not only pleasure but knowledge, insight into the nature of reality. If you say that you enjoy wax apples simply because we enjoy seeing man‘s skill at imitation, you are not introducing the criterion of knowledge. If, however, you say that by looking at the imitation we come to know something about reality, you are saying that art furnishes knowledge, and that its value depends partly on its truth. Many people want their literature to be true – to be an illuminating reflection of reality. Milton, it might be said, in Paradise Lost imitated the fall of Adam and Eve, and he did so in an effort (he says) to ―justify the ways of God to men‖. He was merely trying to divert, he was trying to help his readers to understand certain 5 facts. The danger, of course, is that the reader may turn literature into a message: he reduces the whole work to a neat moral. Does literature give knowledge? Perhaps the answer is that we do not learn from literature how to act in a particular situation, but we do learn something about life in general. After seeing a play, we feel that we have achieved at least a momentarily understanding of some of facts of life. The happening in the book or on the stage not only seems some degree to resemble things in real life, but they also clarify real life, making us say: ―Yes, people are like that, but I hadn‘t noticed it before.‖

B. The Expressive Theory It holds that the artist is not essentially an imitator but a man who expresses his feelings. A quotation from William Wordsworth will make this theory clear. ―Poetry,‖ he said, ―is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.‖ The artist‘s vision, the theory holds, is more inward than outward; the work of art is not an imitation of the external world but an expression of the internal world, the embodiment of an 6 emotion. This theory sometimes holds that ―truth‖ has nothing to do with literature; Landor‘s ―Heart‘s-Ease‖, it might be said, expresses his feelings, and his feelings cannot be true or false. They simply exist. But sometimes an expressive theory insists that a work is true if it is sincere. Since, however, the reader of a piece of literature cannot know if the author was sincere when he wrote it, the criterion of sincerity is valueless. We cannot say that Julius Caesar is sincere; perhaps Shakespeare wrote it to a theater-owner‘s prescription. Most expression of emotion, after all, are valueless to everyone but the person expressing them. Not all expression of emotion, clearly, are works of art, and conversely, if a work of art is an expression of emotion, it must be a very special kind of expression. People who advocate the expressive theory still have another argument. By showing us how he sees and feels something, a writer may pluck the blinders from our eyes and melt the ice around our heart. An awareness of how other people feel is, after all, a way of expanding and enriching one‘s own personality.

C. The Affective Theory It holds that a work of art ought to arouse a particular emotion in the perceiver. This theory us often closely related to the expressive theory: the artist allegedly expresses his emotion, embodying it in a work of art, and this work evokes in the perceiver a similar or identical emotion. Usually the affective theory insists that the aim is not to induce a temporary emotional state, but to induce an emotional state that will lead to action. Such a theory might hold, for example, that the artist is so to stimulate in people an awareness of the horror of war that they will go out and do something about stopping wars. This chapter opened with the query, ―What is literature?‖ and it has not yet given a satisfactory answer. Nor will it. No one has come up with a satisfactory answer. Textbooks and theoretical treaties are filled with neat definitions, but no definition has yet withstood all criticism. It would be nice to say that literature evokes emotion, but so does a good deal of non literature (e.g. a documentary account of the Tsunami in Aceh). It would be nice to say that literature is essentially fictional, but is a poem on, say, the power of God, fictional? 8

Is such a poem fictional to the believer who composes it or to the believer who reads it? So it goes, definition after definition fails when it is applied to specific works that we know are works of art. From the brief sketch of the three critical theories, surely we can agree that a piece of literature is a performance in words; it strongly holds our attention, seeming complete in itself, it is not primarily regarded as a source of factual information; and it offers a unique delight or satisfaction. Finally, most people would say that it has beneficial effects on the perceiver. A great literary work can widen our horizon, enhance our capacity to understand and delight in life, and provide pleasure as well as intellectual satisfaction. Literature is roughly categorized into two different genre namely non-fiction and fiction. The former has several characteristics such as the factual and denotative language, while the latter tends to be imaginative, and its language is often connotative. Non-fiction  Essay: It is a short composition or analysis on a fact using the writer‘s point of view. It can talk about 9

anything, and it would provoke thought rather than emotion.  Criticism: It is an analysis to evaluate a literary work. It is actually an argumentative essay which its object of analysis is a work of art.  Biography: It is a story of a person written by someone else. Usually it uses chronological order starting from the childhood to the death of the person written about.  Autobiography: It is a sort of biography written by the person himself/herself. The strength of this kind of writing is the details which may not be known by other people can be elaborated, while the weakness lies on the possibility of the writer to hide the negative sides of him/her.  Diary: It is a record of someone‘s life written regularly. It is often regarded a literary work due to its honesty and spontaneity.  Letters: A letter of someone send to someone else can be considered as a literary work because of its the same quality as diary.

Fiction When we speak of fiction, most of us are referring to the short story and the novel- the two genres that have dominated our literary culture. Broadly defined, however, the world fiction refers to any narrative in prose or in verse that is wholly or in part the product of the imagination. As such, plays and narrative poems can be classified as fiction, as folktales, parables, fables, and romances-all which contain certain fictional elements. When we talk about fiction in this sense, then, we are not talking about fiction as a genre (short story and the novel) but about way of treating subject matter; we are, that is making a statement about the relationship between real life and the life depicted in literature. The precise relationship between fiction and life has been debated extensively among critics and authors since classical times. Such distinction can at time be troublesome, as for example when we recognize that some works we refer to as fiction describe a real time and place and contain information about events and people that historians can document as authentic. Most modern critics agree, however, that whatever its apparent factual content, fiction is finally to be regarded as 11

a structured imitation of life and is not be confused with a literal transcription of life itself. Fiction organizes and refines the raw material of fact to emphasize and clarify what is most significant in life. The world of fiction is re-created a world, a world of the possible and the probable, rather than the actual. It is governed by its own rules and internal completeness. To the extent that we find such a world credible or believable, it is because the world has been made to be consistent and coherent in character and event. Consider the relationship between Daniel Defoe‘s ship wrecked hero and his real-life original character, Alexander Selkirk: The “truth” of Robinson Crusoe is the acceptability of the things we are told, their acceptability in the interest of the effects of the narrative, not their correspondence with any actual facts involving Alexander Selkirk or another… That is “true” or “internally necessary” which completes or accords with the rest of the experience, which cooperates to arouse our ordered response … From Principle of literary criticism, I.A.Richard (1928)

The writer of fiction, however, may deliberately choose not to deal the world of our everyday experience at all. His chosen manner of treatment may be symbolic rather than realistic; the

12 tone may be satirical, or ironic rather than serious. The writer of fiction, in short, is free to exercise tremendous freedom in his choice of subject matter and the fictional elements so as to achieve any one of a number of desired effects. In every instance, the success depends on how well he or she has succeeded in unifying the story and controlling its impact; it does not depend on closely or faithfully life is mirrored or copied. In the next chapters, we are going to understand further about the characteristics and intrinsic elements of literary works begun from prose, poetry and drama.

CHAPTER II PLOT AND CHARACTER

A. PLOT The Nature of Plot: What this seems to imply is that the simple setting down of events in temporal sequence is not the main concern of the writer of fiction. Other things are more important to him. It is in arranging the events of his story according to demands other than the purely temporal that author creates plot. On other words, plot reveals events to us, not only in their temporal, but also in their causal relationship. Plot makes us aware of events not merely as elements in a temporal series but also as an intricate pattern of cause and effect. Nick‘s decision, at the end of ―The Killers‖, to live the town in which the story is set in one event in a series. But it is also the effect of the events that have preceded it, the implication of those events, and the impact of events and implications on Nick. Gatsby‘s death and dismal funeral in Fitzgerald‘s novel must be seen as the final effects of causal chain that can be traced all the way back to his 14

boyhood. And, as Fitzgerald‘s novel indicates, the writer of fiction is willing to manipulate temporal relationships boldly for the sake of revealing with the greatest amount of force the casual relationship that are his principal concern. By plot in fiction, then, we mean not simply the events recounted in the story but the author‘s arrangement of those events according to their casual relationships. The Structure of Plot: To recognize this much, however, is only a beginning . We must consider in more specific terms the form this ―arrangement‖ we call plot is likely to take. For underlying the evident diversity of fiction, we may discern certain recurring patterns. We may seem to be belaboring the obvious if we note that one discernible pattern in the division of the story into beginning , middle, and end. But if we remind ourselves that a story is a series of choices, this apparently crude division may come to seem more significant. The writer chooses to begin his story at one point and end it one another. And, as we have seen, he need not feel bound by temporal sequence in moving from beginning through middle to end. The pattern of beginning-

middle-end is therefore a pattern of choices---that is, a meaningful pattern. 1. BEGINNING We expect a story to begin at the beginning. Now in a story like The Killers the beginning may what comes first in time, but The Great Gatsby illustrates that this is not always so. What we want to know, then, is what, besides temporal sequence, determines the choice of beginning. Rather than losing ourselves in abstractions at this point, let‘s examine the beginning--- specifically, the first paragraph---of a very famous story, Nathaniel Hawthorne‘s Young Goodman Brown. ―Young Goodman Brown come forth at sunset into the street at Salem village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, Thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman Brown.‖  Exposition: The first thing we may note about this paragraph is that it provides us with a certain amount of information. We are introduced to the story‘s title character; we are informed that he has a wife; we are told

16 her name; we are told that, like her husband, she is young; and we are told that she is pretty. We are also informed that Brown and his wife live in Salem village. Now Salem, we know, is a city in Massachusetts. The word ―village‖, however, indicates the historical setting of the story: it takes place before Salem became a city. Finally, we are informed that Young Goodman Brown is parting from his wife. We are not told at this point whether he is going on a trivial errand or long journey. This information is given a bit later in this story; the beginning is not here, not is it usually, limited to a single paragraph. The name usually given to the process by which the writer imparts to the reader information necessary to the understanding of the story is ―exposition,‖ and exposition is normally a primary function of the beginning of any story.  The Element of Instability: It is seldom, in fiction of any merit, that the beginning, however expository it may seem, does not imply more than the facts it presents. For the situation with which the story begins must have certain openness, must be capable of some sort of development, or else there would be no story. 17

In short, we may expect that the situation with which the story begins will contain within it hidden or overt element instability. What evidence of instability, whether hidden or overt, do we find in the first paragraph of ―Young Goodman Brown?‖ Apparently, Hawthorne is presenting a picture of an almost ideally happy marriage. We note, for instance, that the young husband, even after starting out, pauses to kiss his wife. Yet there are unsettling elements in this paragraph. First of all, the young couple are parting. Again, we do not know at this point for how long they will be apart. Yet we know that any separation is a potential challenge to the stability of relationship. Secondly, there are certain ambiguities in the presentation of young wife. She is, we are told, aptly named Faith. Still, the image of the wind playing with the ribbons of her cap is disturbing. For one thing, the detail of pink ribbons, combined with her prettiness, makes us suspect the possibility of vanity as quality of Faith‘s character, and vanity is always a potential source of instability. Finally, the story is set in Salem village. Any reasonably informed reader must be aware of 18

Salem witch hunts of the seventeenth century. Naturally, we wonder if witchcraft is to play a part in the story about to unfold. In short, while the first paragraph of Hawthorne‘s story seems on superficial first reading an almost idyllic picture of marital bliss, certain troubling details will make the sensitive reader aware the potential instability in situation. This awareness will, of course, become more precise as the story progresses. Eventually the reader will see which potential sources of instability constitute the real threat to the apparent stability of the individual situation and what form this thread will take. As these points become clear, we move from the beginning to the middle of the story. The beginning of a story then, in addition to the necessary exposition, gives us the picture of a situation in which there exist sources of instability, which may at the outset be latent or overt. In these respects, the beginning of ―Young Goodman Brown‖ is typical. But it should not be concluded that the beginning of every story will be in all details like that of this story. Again, the author has number choices open to him. 19

CHOICE AND BEGINNINGS: The beginning of ―Young Goodman Brown‖ is scenic. For the moment, let us just observe that Hawthorne begins his story with direct presentation of two characters in action, rather than with a more generalized sort of introductory passage. The beginning of ―My Kinsman, Major Molineux‖, another story by Hawthorne, is quite different: After the kings of Great Britain had assumed the right of appointing the colonial governors, the measures of the letter seldom met the ready and generous approbation which had been paid to those their predecessor, under the original charters. The people looked with most jealous scrutiny to the exercise of power which did not emanate from themselves, and they usually rewarded the rules with slender gratitude for the compliance by which, in softening their instructions from beyond the sea, they had incurred the reprehension of those who gave them . . . .

The story is, then, placed explicitly in a historical setting, which is presented to us in general terms before the introduction of specific characters. Why Hawthorne chose one kind of beginning for ―Young Goodman Brown‖ and ―My Kinsman, Major Molineux‖ is not a question we need settle here. Both beginnings, we should note, fulfill the an

20 expository function, while suggesting (more explicitly in ―My Kinsman, Major Molineux‖) sources of instability in the initial situation.

2. THE MIDDLE---CONFLICT, COMPLICATION, CLIMAX: We move from the end of beginning to the beginning of the middle as the elements tending towards instability in the initial situation group themselves into what we recognize as a pattern of conflict. In ―Young Goodman Brown‖ this pattern emerges upon Brown‘s encounter with a strange man in the forest. Brown has been thinking of what is to happen that night and musing that knowledge of it would kill his wife, Faith. The strange man has been expecting Brown and is, it seems, to be his companion for the evening. But Brown indicates that he wishes to return home. It is in Brown‘s attempt to resist the will of his companion that the conflict becomes evident. Note that this conflict is related to the elements on instability we observed in the first paragraph of the story. To be sure, the suggestion of weakness in Faith‘s character 21 is not yet developed. But the possible dangers in a parting from loved ones are certainly involved in Young Goodman Brown‘s journey into a dark forest where terrible work is to be done. And the diabolical overtones of this must remind us of hints of witchcraft we find in Salem setting.  Complication and Climax: Just as a development towards conflict is latent in the initial situation, so is a development toward climax latent in initial conflict. The movement from initial statement of conflict to the climax is often referred to as complication. The climax is reached when the complication attaints its highest point of intensity, from which point the outcome of story is inevitable. In ―Young Goodman Brown,‖ the complication consists primarily of diabolical rites to which the stranger (who is, we are told, the devil) leads the half-resisting Brown. Also included this process by which the hero resistance is weakened until he numbers himself among the converts to the diabolical religion whose rites are being celebrated. But he hero‘s conversion is not itself the climax. This, the story‘s highest point of intensity, occurs when Brown finds 22 that his wife, Faith, the wife he had believed would be killed by the very thought of such evil practices, is among the converts. The importance of complication in fiction cannot be overestimated. Without adequate complication, the conflict would remain inert, its possibilities never realized. And it is by his control of complication that the writer gradually increases the intensity of his narrative, thus preparing us to receive the full impact of the climax. As a rough measure of importance of complication, examination will reveal that the largest part of ―Young Goodman Brown,‖ as of any great work of fiction, is devoted to complication. It is hardly overstatement to say that it is in his invention and control of complication that the great writer of fiction most fully reveals his genius.

3. THE END In our three-part division of the work of fiction, the end consists of everything from the climax to the denouement, or outcome of the story. In ―young Goodman Brown‖ the end is devoted to the aftermath of 23

Brown‘s experience in the forest. Shattered by what has happened, he lives out his live is misery, and, we are told, ―his dying hour was gloom.‖ We began by discussing the structure of plot in terms of beginning, middle, and end. We may now see that the beginning takes us from exposition to the initial statement of conflict; the middle, from conflict to complication and climax; and the end, from climax to denouement. NOTE ON CONFLICT: The conflicts with which fiction concerns itself are many kinds. A story may deal with a conflict within a single man (e.g. desire vs. duty), a conflict between men, a conflict between man and society, between man and nature, and so on. You may often find it helpful to state the conflict of the story in terms applicable to a sports event or court case, for example, A vs. B, the hero‘s individual conscience vs. the demands of society. How would you state the conflict of a story in terms applicable to a sport?

THE LAW OF PLOT: In forming the particular plot of his story, the writer may be expected to follow the certain laws. When we speak of the laws of the plot, we do not mean the kinds of laws passed by the legislative bodies. We mean rather than generalization drawn from the practice of best writers through the ages. To deviate from this law is not, therefore, is a crime. Still we may expect that writers of the future will continue to follow the basic principle observed by their great predecessors. In fact, apparent deviations from these laws will often turn out on closer inspection to be not deviation at all, but new application of the old principles.  PLAUSABILITY: Of the laws governing plot in fiction, one of the most important is certainly the law of plausibility. To say that a story has plausibility is simply to say that it is convincing on its own terms. There are, then, two steps involved in judging whether a story has plausibility. For before we can determine whether a story is convincing on its own terms, we must recognize what those terms are

The demand for plausibility must not, for instance, be confused with the demand of realism. We have a right to demand that a story be plausible; at least, the great works of fiction always have been plausible. We have no right to demand that a story be realistic, for realism is only one of the many modes of fiction. A story is plausible when it is true to itself. Skeptical readers may find it unrealistic that the Devil appears as a character in ―Young Goodman Brown.‖ But, even these readers must admit that, if we accept the Devil‘s direct intrusion in human affairs as premise, the rest of the story is perfectly convincing. Consider the denouement, for instance. Brown‘s ―dying hour was gloom.‖ Note how naturally this flow from what has gone before. Brown dies in gloom because he is unable to bear the insight into man‘s sinful nature he has received in the forest. And this insight is unbearable because, before going into the forest, Brown had an idealized, rather than realistic, view of human nature. This idealized view had made him believe that his wife, Faith, would be killed by the very thought of sin. He was unable to see her as human, 26

that is, as capable of sin---just he is capable of sin. And his extreme reaction to his new sight is entirely plausible, for just as Faith seemed totally good to him before, now she seems totally evil. At the end of the story, as at the beginning, Brown is unable to accept the truth that human nature is mixed. There is, then, a consistency underlying the superficial reversal in Brown‘s character and outlook. And this consistency is the basis of the story‘s plausibility, of its truth to itself.  SURPRISE: Plausibility, we have said, implies a story‘s truth to itself. Now this seems to suggest that a story‘s end is somehow contained in its beginning. In a sense, this is true. At the same time, a story that never surprises us is likely to prove rather dull reading. But how many apparently contradictory claims to surprise and plausibility be reconciled? An answer may be suggested by the simple example of the pure detective story. When, at the end of the second-to-last chapter in a novel by John Dickson Carr or Agatha Christie, the murderer‘s identity is revealed, we want to be surprised. 27

Indeed, if we are not surprised we quite rightly consider this a flaw in the novel. But then we turn to the last chapter. For a detective novel does not usually end with the identification of the murderer. After he has identified the murderer, the great detective proceeds to explain the process of reasoning by which he has arrived at his solution. And now we want to be convinced that the solution which seemed so surprising was fact inevitable---the only possible solution in the light of the evidence. And again, if the demand is not satisfied, we feel that the novel is flawed. Now, what is explicit, even mechanical, in the detective story is implicit in all good fiction. We want to be surprised, but then we want to be satisfied that the surprise does not violate the basic law plausibility. Is it surprising that Faith is at the dark rites of the forest? It is also plausible. We are, after all, all sinner. And we are not asked to accept Faith presence until it has been made clear virtually the entire population of Salem village, including the preacher and Brown‘s own parents, is also present. Finally we recall that, at the very beginning of the 28 story, we saw in the pink ribbons in Faith‘s hair the pathetic flag of her human frailty.  SUSPENSE: A third law governing plot is that a good plot arouses suspense. By suspense we mean an expectant uncertainty as to the outcome of the story. True suspense is more than a matter of not knowing how things will turn out. I don‘t know how things turn out in hundreds of the stories that I‘ve never read, but I‘m hardly in suspense about them. The suspense of which we speak involves some awareness of the possibilities and, ideally, some concern about them. The suspense of which we speak involves some awareness of the possibilities and, ideally, some concern about them. Suspense develops as we become aware of the incipient instability in a situation. In ―Young Goodman Brown,‖ for instance, we are in suspense as soon as we are aware that faith might be in the forest. Our suspense as to this point is relieved when we learn that she is there. A device conducive to suspense is foreshadowing. By this we mean introducing details which hint at the direction the story is going to take. Hawthorne, for instance, introduces 29 details that suggest Faith‘s presence before explicitly revealing her presence to us. He thus builds up in us the expectation (not, however, the certainty) that she will be there, then satisfies that expectation.

PLOT AND UNITY: The one overriding demand we commonly make of plot is that it has unity. It should be clear by now that a plot that fits the description suggested in the present chapter must inevitably have unity. Any plot that has a true beginning, middle, and end and that follows the laws of plausibility, surprise, and suspense must have unity, for that is all we mean by unity.  SUBPLOTS: A special problem relating to unity arises in some longer works of fiction. This is the problem of subplot, by which is meant a sequence of event distinct, at least in part, from the main plot. Where a subplot exists, we may expect that one of two things is true. First, the subplot may be closely related to the main plot, for instance as an analogy to the main plot. The clearest example of this comes not from fiction but from drama. In Shakespeare‘s King Lear the subplot 30 involving Gloucester and his sons is clearly analogous to the main plot involving Lear and his daughter. A second possibility is that the work‘s principle of unity is to be found in some element other than plot---for instance in theme. If neither of these two conditions is met, the subplot compromises the unity of the work as a whole and is to that extent a flaw. A work flawed in this way may still be excellent, however. The episode of ―The Man on the Hill‖ in Henry Fielding‗s Tom Jones is generally considered a violation of unity, but few would deny that Tom Jones is one of the great English novels. The explanation of this judgment is that, apart from this one flaw, Tom Jones has one of the most intricately unified plots in the history of the novel and also has virtues other than unity (e.g., vitality) which must be taken into account in any adequate evaluation.

PLOT AS UNITY: As this discussion suggests, plot may be the single most important device making for unity in a particular story. In organizing events into beginning, 31 middle, and end, the author is imposing on, or discovering in, the raw material of experience that sense of order which is what we mean by unity in art.

PLOT AS EXPRESSION: It would be unfortunate if this analytic, discussion of plot seemed to suggest that plotting is merely a mechanical process. In fact, plot is of the highest importance in expressing the meaning of a work of fiction. It is through plot that the author organizes the raw material of experience, and an author's way of organizing experience must tell us a great deal about his way of understanding experience---that is, about the meaning experience has for him. Surely our sense of the meaning of experience is closely tied to our understanding of what causes what, and it is the business of plot to clarify causal relationships. To recognize the cause of Goodman Brown's gloom is to recognize the meaning of his story. We may conclude, then, that an understanding of plot is the most important factor in the understanding of fiction. Plot, says Aristotle, is the soul of tragedy. It may well be the soul of fiction, too. 32

B. CHARACTER The reader may find it more difficult, however, to think of character in these terms. For, if there are no plots in life, there certainly are people. And most of us tend to expect the people—or ―characters"—in fiction to be similar to the people in life. To say of a fictional character that he is ―artificial‖ is usually to imply disapproval. Whatever degree of artifice we are willing to allow in plot, we expect characters to be ―natural‖ or ―lifelike.‖

LIFELIKENESS THE STANDARD OF LIFELIKENESS: It is the argument of this chapter that the standard of lifelikeness is inadequate for judging character in fiction. At best, the notion of lifelikeness is an oversimplification. A fictional character must be other things besides lifelike, and the standard of lifelikeness doesn‘t help us to understand very much about the ways in which character is presented in fiction. But apart from being an oversimplification, the standard of lifelikeness may be downright misleading, especially if taken too literally. That is, the search for lifelikeness may lead the 33 reader to overlook much that is essential in literary characterization. Just what do we mean when we say a character should be lifelike? What kind of life should a character be like? If we insist that characters should be like the people we know, aren‘t we imposing an excessively severe limitation on the author‘s creative powers? Would the great characters of fiction meet this test? Would Hamlet? Don Quixote? Captain Ahab? I am not suggesting that we should entirely ignore the relation between fictional characters and real human beings. Rather, I am saying we should recognize that this relation is a complex, not a simple one. We should be aware, then, not only of the similarities but also of the differences between fictional characters and real human beings.

CHARACTER AND FREEDOM: Whatever is true of the amount of freedom human beings enjoy, the fictional character is never entirely free. For, unlike the real human being, the fictional character is part of an artistic whole and must always serve the needs of that whole. One of the most delicate tasks of the writer of fiction is to create and maintain 34 the illusion that his characters are free, while at the same time making sure they are not really so. For a really free character would be free of his duty to the story of which he is a part. And a story which admitted such freedom could never achieve unity. The necessity of being fitted into a satisfying artistic whole is the most important difference between the fictional character and the human being and is the basis of all the other differences.

CHARACTER AND CHOICE: It is not enough, then, for a writer to be able to observe human nature and, from his observations, to imagine lifelike characters. The necessity of placing character in a unified work of art forces the author into a series of choices. He must always be prepared to sacrifice one interest—for instance, the interest of ―lifelikeness‖ in character for its own sake--for the sake of others, for instance, the interest in plot, in theme, in the unity of the whole. At the same time, he must make sure that the choices he is forced to make do not become too obvious, for he wants us to concentrate on the story, not on the difficulties he had in writing it. 35

THE STANDARD OF RELEVANCE: Any discussion of character in fiction, then, must attend to the relationships between character and the other elements of the story, and between character and the story as a whole. That is, character must be considered as part of the story's internal structure. But just as we ultimately refer the story as a whole to the real world in which we live our lives, so we may refer character to the real human beings who inhabit that world. Essentially, we refer the fictional characters to ourselves. I am the human beings I know best. At this point the standard of lifelikeness may seem to suggest itself once again. But the limitations of that standard should now be even more clear. For if we ask that the characters be like ourselves or like the people we know, we are not only setting boundaries on the writer's imagination, but we may also be overlooking the function of character within the story. More to the point than the standard of lifelikeness is the standard of relevance. According to this standard, the question is not whether the fictional character is like me. Rather, the question is, what has he to do with me. In other words, what is the character's relevance to me. 36

UNIVERSAL AND PARTICULAR: The advantage of the standard of relevance is that it allows the author a full measure of freedom in the creation of character without denying the point of contact between the character and the reader. Theoretically, the author can range from the pure type, representing one universal quality, to the most eccentric of individuals. He is bound only by the reader's demand that the characters in fiction be in some way relevant to his own experience. It should be noted that a character may be far removed from the "average" or "normal" without becoming irrelevant to the reader. In William Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury, Benjy, one of the principal characters, is literally an idiot. An important part of the novel is told from Benjy's point of view. The standard of lifelikeness would be of little help in judging Faulkner's success in portraying Benjy. How can a reader who is not himself an idiot determine whether Faulkner faithfully presents the workings of an idiot's mind? If Faulkner's portrayal of Benjy is generally admired, it is because most readers feel the relevance of Benjy.

FORMS OF RELEVANCE: What do we mean when we say that a character as different from the average reader as Benjy is still relevant to the reader? There are essentially two ways in which a character can be relevant. A character is obviously relevant to us and to our experience if he is like ourselves or like others whom we know. Lifelikeness, then, is properly understood as one form of relevance. A character is relevant if there are a lot of people like him in the real world. But, as we have already noted, the world does not contain many Hamlets, Don Quixotes, or Captain Ahabs. Are these characters, so often numbered among the great literary creations, therefore irrelevant to us? If so, then either the standard of relevance is worthless, or the critical judgment of generations has been mistaken. What we must do is to recognize a second form of relevance. There are not many Don Quixotes around, but there is something of Don Quixote in each of us. It is in this sense that we feel his relevance to us. And it may be that this form of relevance, rather than lifelikeness, is the secret of the power the great characters of fiction hold for us. 38

JUDGING FICTIONAL CHARACTERS: In judging fictional characters, then, there are certain questions that seem appropriate. Two of the most important are: What is the relevance of this character to me? In what ways does he contribute to the story of which he is part? Any judgment that ignores either of these questions will probably be inadequate.

SIMPLE AND COMPLEX CHARACTERS The preceding paragraph suggests standards for judging fictional characters. But before these or any standards may be responsibly applied it is necessary to examine more clearly the portrayal of character in fiction. We have to know more about the kinds of characters that appear in fiction and about the means by which character is portrayed. With regard to the kinds of characters portrayed, it may be helpful to follow the practice of many critics and divide fictional characters into two general categories. Our names for these categories will be simple characters and complex characters. Other critics, in making essentially the same division, sometimes use different terms. One of the most suggestive statements of the distinction we have in mind is 39 that of E. M. Forster, who, in his Aspects of the Novel, divides the characters of fiction into "flat" and "round" characters.

 SIMPLE (FLAT) CHARACTERS: The simple, or flat, character is less the representation of a human personality than the embodiment of a single attitude or obsession in a character. Forster calls this kind of character flat because we see only one side of him. Included among simple characters are all the familiar types, or stereotypes, of fiction. The mark of the stereotyped character is that he can be summed up adequately in a formula: the noble savage, the trusted old family retainer, and the poor but honest working girl are a few familiar fictional types. Not all simple characters, however, are stereotypes like those referred to above. The essence of the stereotype may be expressed in a formula that applies to a large number of fictional characters, drawn from a large number of works of fiction. We must recognize the existence of a second kind of simple character. Like the stereotype, this kind of character may be summed up in a formula. But he differs 40

from the stereotype in that his formula is his own; there is no other character in fiction whom it exactly fits. An Example from Dickens: The works of Charles Dickens are filled with examples of this second kind of simple character. Consider, for instance, Uriah Heep in Dickens' novel David Copperfield. Uriah is certainly a simple character; his personality is made up of very few elements. In fact, he may be described as no more than an embodiment of his peculiar kind of "humility." The point is that his humility is of a peculiar kind. Uriah Heep is a simple character but he is not a stereotype, because there is no one else quite like him in fiction.

 COMPLEX (ROUND) CHARACTERS: At the other end of the spectrum is the complex character, called round by Forster because we see all sides of him. The complex character is obviously more lifelike than the simple, because in life people are not simply embodiments of single attitudes. It would be pointless to list examples of complex characters from fiction. If Dickens is a master of the simple character, most of the great English novelists excel in 41 portraying complex characters. Becky Sharp the protagonist of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, is one example; the husband, Rawdon Crawley, is another. In fact, Vanity Fair abounds in brilliantly portrayed complex characters. If the mark of the simple character is that he can be summed up adequately in a formula, the mark of the complex character is that he is capable of surprising us. Rawdon Crawley's deepening sense of responsibility in Vanity Fair, for instance, is surprising in the light of the first impression he makes. But in character, as in plot, surprise must not arise from a violation of plausibility. Thackeray's portrayal of Rawdon Crawley is one of the great examples in English fiction of a writer's convincing us of profound changes in one of his characters. And his success is based in large part on our awareness, which may become conscious awareness only in the process of analysis, that the seeds of change, and of precisely this kind of change, have been present in Rawdon from the start.

GRADATIONS IN COMPLEXITY: In contrasting simple and complex characters above, I used the metaphor of the spectrum. This was not accidental. For characters in fiction should not be thought of as existing in sealed compartments, one marked "simple," the other "complex." The metaphor of the spectrum, connoting subtle differences in gradation as we move from the simple to the complex, is more to the point. Captain Ahab, in Melville's Moby Dick, is certainly closer to the simple than to the complex end of the spectrum, but he is not, like many of the stereotypes of boys' fiction, an absolutely simple character. Although he unswervingly pursues a single goal throughout the novel, and is in this respect a simple character he is capable at least of some hesitation, self-doubt, intern division and therefore tends towards complexity.

FUNCTION OF COMPLEX CHARACTERS: Should a writer choose complexity or simplicity in the portrayal of character. It is often suggested (by Forster, among others) that the complex, or round, character is a higher kind of achievement than the simple. As we shall see, this view 43 must be seriously qualified. But let's begin by examining the functions that can be served by the complex character.

METHODS OF CHARACTER PORTRAYAL The author must choose not only what kind of characters he will present, but also by what methods he will present them. There are a number of methods available to the author, each with its advantages and disadvantages. We shall classify these as the discursive, the dramatic, and the contextual.  DISCURSIVE METHOD: The author who chooses the discursive method simply tells us about his characters. He enumerates their qualities and may even express approval or disapproval of them. The advantages of this method are simplicity and economy. The writer who is content to tell us directly about his characters can quickly finish the job of characterization and go on to other things. This method, like the others, has its disadvantages. It is relatively mechanical and discourages the reader's imaginative participation. That is, the reader is not 44

encouraged to react directly to the characters, to make up his own mind about them, as he must react to and make up his own mind about the real people he meets. Modern writers and critics have tended to regard the discursive method of characterization as intrinsically inferior to other methods. The author, according to this view, should not tell us, he should show us. Like most critical generalizations, this one oversimplifies. The discursive method can be the best choice under certain circumstances. When economy and directness are desired, the author may well consider the discursive method.  THE DRAMATIC METHOD: Economy and directness are always virtues, but they are not always the virtues appropriate to the situation. Therefore, the discursive method will not always serve. The principal alternative to the discursive method is the dramatic method, the method of showing rather than telling. In the dramatic method, the author allows his characters to reveal themselves to us through their own words and actions. This, of course, allows character is revealed to 45 us in drama; that is why we call this method dramatic. But it is also how people reveal themselves to us in life. In life, there is no author around to tell us that Mr. X is generous. Rather, by observing what Mr. X does and what he says, we may conclude that Mr. X is generous. It is the same with the fictional character presented dramatically. The advantages of the dramatic method should be obvious. Compared to the discursive method, the dramatic is more lifelike and invites the reader's active participation in the story. The dramatic method has been generally favored by writers of fiction in the twentieth century. This method has its disadvantages. It is less economical than the discursive, since to show takes longer than to tell. And, while it encourages the reader's active participation, it also increases the possibility of his misjudging the character. This second difficulty should, of course, not exist for the alert reader, provided the author has been sufficiently skillful in his showing.

When vividness of presentation is more important than economy, the writer will choose the dramatic method. Characters on Other Characters: Included under the general heading of the dramatic method is the device of having one character in a story talk about another. The reader must remember, of course, that information received in this way is not necessarily reliable. What A says of B may tell us more about A than about B. Still, this is one source of information about character.  THE CONTEXTUAL METHOD: By the contextual method we mean the device of suggesting character by the verbal context that surrounds the character. If, for instance, a character is constantly described in terms appropriate to a beast of prey, the reader may well conclude that the author is trying to tell him something.  MIXING METHODS: The reader will rarely find a work of fiction in which only one of the methods outlined above is employed. Indeed, the contextual method can be used effectively only in combination with other methods. In evaluating an author's methods of characterization, the reader must keep in mind the 47

appropriateness of the author's methods to the overall design of the story.

REVELATION AND DEVELOPMENT: Up to this point, we have been talking about character and the methods of portraying it as if the author's job were simply to show the character to us and then go into other things. But the revelation of character may be only part of the author's concern; he may also be interested in the development of character. In Thackeray's portrayal of Rawdon Crawley, for instance, development is of the greatest importance. Development, of course, implies the passage of time. Thus we may expect a greater emphasis on development of character in the novel, since the novel permits the author to show the passage of time more fully, while the short story will often concentrate on the revelation of character.

MOTIVATION: We have insisted throughout this discussion that character must always be seen as one element in a larger artistic whole. The point at which character and plot come together is what we mean by the term motivation. Plot, for the most part, consists of what the characters do. Motivation is why 48 they do it. We may think of motivation as general or particular. General motivation covers such basic human drives as love, hunger, greed, and so on. Particular motivation involves the individual applications of these basic drives. If the hero acts to impress the heroine, this is particular motivation, an application of such general motives as love and, perhaps, vanity. It is part of coherence in character and plot that the reader be able to identify both the general and particular motivation for the actions of the characters. It is part of the story's general plausibility that the motivation be at all times adequate to the action. If a character kills, we should be satisfied that we know why he killed and that the "why" is an adequate reason, or at least would seem adequate to the character, to act as he does.

Further Reading DORIS LESSING b. 1919, Rhodesian, Naturalized British Doris Lessing was born Doris Taylor in Persia (now lran) in 1919. When she was five years old, her father who had been a captain in the British army and later a bank manager in Persia, moved the family to an isolated farm in the British colony of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). As a teenager Lessing rebelled against her mother's plans to educate her as a British gentlewoman. At fifteen, she ran away and supported herself by working secretarial job in Rhodesia‘s capital, Salisbury. She married twice and had three children. In 1949, however, Lessing and her youngest child left Africa and her second husband to live in London. From that time she earned and her living as a writer. She was briefly a member and organizer for the British Communist Party, which she credits with teaching her "a great deal, chiefly about the nature of political power how groups of people operate." She sometimes turns that knowledge to comic purposes as in "The Day Stalin Died," a satire in which politics prove mostly personal.

Lessing‘s experience in Africa haunts her work. As she depicts Rhodesia in her first two books---the novel, The Grass Is Singing (1950), and the short-story collection This was the Old Chief Country (1951)---relations between Rhodesian were polarized. The English colonial minority, like her family, depended on native Africans for every kind of work, but they established dehumanizing racial barrier between the black and white populations. Lessing condemns the racism but ultimately sees it as "Only one aspect of atrophy of the imagination which prevents us from seeing ourselves in every creature that breathes under the sun." Indeed, she describes relations between white husbands and wives as similarly divided. The conventions of planter society and the stress of living in an alien environment merely made more extreme, Lessing maintains, the already deep estrangement between British men and women. In her African fiction, Lessing depicts various attempts to change these habits of thought and behavior, particularly on the part of the young, as tragically counter balanced by apathy and fatalism. In 1962, Lessing published what was to become her best- known work, The Golden Notebook. This innovative novel alternates conventional narrative with excerpts from the diary of 51 its heroine, Anna Wulf, a writer struggling to redefine herself in relation to men and to her work. The novel was lauded for its Frank portrayal of women‘s need to change their political and domestic roles, and it soon became a touch stone for feminist intellectual. Lessing‘s Children of Violence (1952-1969), a quintet of novels with a quasi-autobiographical protagonist named Martha Quest, reflected the author experiences in Africa and as a newcomer to London. The final book in the series, The Four-Gated City (1969), ended on an apocalyptic note that restaged much of Lessing‘s later work. In the I970s she began to publish science fiction, much of it collected in the series Canopus in Argus (1979), which continued to convey her interest in postapocalyptic possibilities. Lessing‘s fascination with disaster and its potential as an agent of social change is perhaps more evident in her novel,The Memoir of a Survivor (1974), in which a woman watches through a window as the city around her falls into chaos and ruin. Lessing has also written drama, poetry, and nonfiction, as well as novel under a pseudonym. In 1983, with The Diary of a Good Neighbour, she began to publish occasional works under the name ‖Jane somers," a trick that Lessing say allowed her to enlarge a range 52 of authorial tone and approach. She also experimented with a graphic novel, a narrative told in comic book form, Playing the Game (1993). Although Lessing is best known for her novels, her most enduring achievement ultimately proves to be her short stories. Her commitment to the form has been serious and long-term. She has published more than a dozen collections of short fiction- --ranging from the early African stories to recent work. Compact, incisive, and original, they show her mastery of the realist mode---creating credible individuals in complex and convincing social situations. ―A woman on a Roof" takes a simple situation and presents the various ways it affects a diverse group of characters. Lessing‘s particular genius is to capture the psychological immediacy and intellectual impact of narrative situation without simplifying it into some preexisting ideology. Deeply feminist, she allows her stories to embody feminist insights without ever becoming knitted by them.

A Woman on a Roof (A Short Story) By Doris Lessing

It was during the week of hot Sun, that June. Three men were at work on the roof, where the leads got so hot they had the idea or throwing water on to cool them. But the water steamed, then sizzled; and they made jokes about getting an egg from some woman in the flats under them, to poach it for their dinner. By two it was not possible to touch the guttering they were replacing, and they speculated about what workmen did in regularly hot countries. Perhaps they should borrow kitchen gloves with the egg? They were all a bit dizzy, not used to the heat; and they shed their coats and stood side by side squeezing themselves into a foot-wide patch of shade against a chimney, careful to keep their feet in the thick socks and boots out of the sun. There was a fine view across several acres of roofs. Not far off a man sat in a deck chair reading the newspaper. Then they saw her, between chimneys, about fifty yards away. She lay face down on a brown blanket. They could see the top part of her: black hair, a flushed solid back, arms spread out."She's stark naked," said Stanley, sounding annoyed. Harry, the oldest, a man of about forty-five, said: "Looks like it." Young Tom, seventeen, said nothing, but he was excited and grinning. Stanley said: "Someone'll report her if she doesn't watch out." "She thinks no one can see," said Tom, craning his head all ways to see more. At this point the woman, still lying prone, brought her two hands up behind her shoulders with the ends of her scarf in them, tied it behind her back, and sat up. She wore a red scarf tied around her breasts and brief red bikini pants. This being the first day of the sun she was white, flushing red. She sat smoking, and did not look up when Stanley let out a wolf whistle. 54

Harry said: "Small things amuse small minds," leading the way back to their part of the roof, but it was scorching. Harry said: "Wait, I'm going to rig up some shade," and disappeared down the skylight into the building. Now that he'd gone, Stanley and Tom went to the farthest point they could to peer at the woman. She had moved, and all they could see were two pink legs stretched on the blanket. They whistled and shouted but the legs did not move. Harry came back with a blanket and shouted: "Come on, then." He sounded irritated with them. They clambered back to him and he said to Stanley: "What about your missus?" Stanley was newly married, about three months. Stanley said, jeering: "What about my missus?"— preserving his independence. Tom said nothing, but his mind was full of the nearly naked woman. Harry slung the blanket, which he had borrowed from a friendly woman downstairs, from the stem of a television aerial to a row of chimney-pots. This shade fell across the piece of gutter they had to replace. But the shade kept moving, they had to adjust the blanket, and not much progress was made. At last some of the heat left the roof, and they worked fast, making up for lost time. First Stanley, then Tom, made a trip to the end of the roof to see the woman. "She's on her back," Stanley said, adding a jest which made Tom snicker, and the older man smiled tolerantly. Tom's report was that she hadn't moved, but it was a lie. He wanted to keep what he had seen to himself: he had caught her in the act of rolling down the little red pants over her hips, till they were no more than a small triangle. She was on her back, fully visible, glistening with oil. Next morning, as soon as they came up, they went to look. She was already there, face down, arms spread out, naked except for the little red pants. She had turned brown in the night. Yesterday 55 she was a scarlet-and-white woman, today she was a brown woman. Stanley let out a whistle. She lifted her head, startled, as if she'd been asleep, and looked straight over at them. The sun was in her eyes, she blinked and stared, then she dropped her head again. At this gesture of indifference, they all three, Stanley, Tom and old Harry, let out whistles and yells. Harry was doing it in parody of the younger men, making fun of them, but he was also angry. They were all angry because of her utter indifference to the three men watching her. "Bitch," said Stanley. "She should ask us over," said Tom, snickering. Harry recovered himself and reminded Stanley: "If she's married, her old man wouldn't like that." "Christ," said Stanley virtuously, "if my wife lay about like that, for everyone to see, I'd soon stop her." Harry said, smiling: "How do you know, perhaps she's sunning herself at this very moment?" "Not a chance, not on our roof," The safety of his wife put Stanley into a good humor, and they went to work. But today it was hotter than yesterday; and several times one or the other suggested they should tell Matthew, the foreman, and ask to leave the roof until the heat wave was over. But they didn't. There was work to be done in the basement of the big block of flats, but up here they felt free, on a different level from ordinary humanity shut in the streets or the buildings. A lot more people came out on to the roof that day, for an hour at midday. Some married couples sat side by side in deck chairs, the women's legs stockingless and scarlet, the men in vests with reddening shoulders. The woman stayed on her blanket, turning herself over and over. She ignored them, no matter what they did. When Harry went off 56 to fetch more screws, Stanley said: "Come on." Her roof belonged to a different system of roofs, separated from theirs at one point by about twenty feet. It meant a scrambling climb from one level to another, edging along parapets, clinging to chimneys, while their big boots slipped and slithered, but at last they stood on a small square projecting roof looking straight down at her, close. She sat smoking, reading a book. Tom thought she looked like a poster, or a magazine cover, with the blue sky behind her and her legs stretched out. Behind her a great crane at work on a new building in Oxford Street swung its black arm across roofs in a great arc. Tom imagined himself at work on the crane, adjusting the arm to swing over and pick her up and swing her back across the sky to drop her near him. They whistled. She looked up at them, cool and remote, then went on reading. Again, they were furious. Or, rather, Stanley was. His sun-heated face was screwed into a rage as he whistled again and again, trying to make her look up. Young Tom stopped whistling. He stood beside Stanley, excited, grinning; but he felt as if he were saying to the woman: Don't associate me with him, for his grin was apologetic. Last night he had thought of the unknown woman before he slept, and she had been tender with him. This tenderness he was remembering as he shifted his feet by the jeering, whistling Stanley, and watched the indifferent, healthy brown woman a few feet off, with the gap that plunged to the street between them. Tom thought it was romantic, it was like being high on two hilltops. But there was a shout from Harry, and they clambered back. Stanley's face was hard, really angry. The boy kept looking at him and wondered why he hated the woman so much, for by now he loved her. They played their little games with the blanket, trying to trap shade to work under; but again it was not 57 until nearly four that they could work seriously, and they were exhausted, all three of them. They were grumbling about the weather by now. Stanley was in a thoroughly bad humor. When they made their routine trip to see the woman before they packed up for the day, she was apparently asleep, face down, her back all naked save for the scarlet triangle on her buttocks. "I've got a good mind to report her to the police," said Stanley, and Harry said: "What's eating you? What harm's she doing?" "I tell you, if she was my wife!" "But she isn't is she?" Tom knew that Harry, like himself, was uneasy at Stanley's reaction. He was normally a sharp young man, quick at his work, making a lot of jokes, good company. "Perhaps it will be cooler tomorrow," said Harry. But it wasn't; it was hotter, if anything, and the weather forecast said the good weather would last. As soon as they were on the roof, Harry went over to see if the woman was there, and Tom knew it was to prevent Stanley going, to put off his bad humor. Harry had grownup children, a boy the same age as Tom, and the youth trusted and looked up to him. Harry came back and said: "She's not there." "I bet her old man put his foot down," said Stanley, and Harry and Tom caught each other's eyes and smiled behind the young married man's back. Harry suggested they should get permission to work in the basement, and they did, that day. But before packing up Stanley said: "Let's have a breath of fresh air." Again Harry and Tom smiled at each other as they followed Stanley up to the roof, Tom in the devout conviction that he was there to protect the woman from Stanley. It was about five-thirty, and a calm, full sunlight lay over the roofs. The great crane still swung its black arm from Oxford Street to above their heads. She was not there. Then there was a flutter of 58 white from behind a parapet, and she stood up, in a belted, white dressing-gown. She had been there all day, probably, but on a different patch of roof, to hide from them. Stanley did not whistle; he said nothing, but watched the woman bend to collect papers, books, cigarettes, then fold the blanket over her arm. Tom was thinking: If they weren't here, I'd go over and say . . . what? But he knew from his nightly dreams of her that she was kind and friendly. Perhaps she would ask him down to her flat? Perhaps . . . He stood watching her disappear down the skylight. As she went, Stanley let out a shrill derisive yell; she started, and it seemed as if she nearly fell. She clutched to save herself, they could hear things falling. She looked straight at them, angry. Harry said, facetiously: "Better be careful on those slippery ladders, love." Tom knew he said it to save her from Stanley, but she could not know it. She vanished, frowning. Tom was full of a secret delight, because he knew her anger was for the others, not for him. "Roll on some rain," said Stanley, bitter, looking at the blue evening sky. Next day was cloudless, and they decided to finish the work in the basement. They felt excluded, shut in the grey cement basement fitting pipes, from the holiday atmosphere of London in a heat wave. At lunchtime they came up for some air, but while the married couples, and the men in shirt-sleeves or vests, were there, she was not there, either on her usual patch of roof or where she had been yesterday. They all, even Harry, clambered about, between chimney-pots, over parapets, the hot leads stinging their fingers. There was not a sign of her. They took off their shirts and vests and exposed their chests, feeling their feet sweaty and hot. They did not mention the woman. But 59

Tom felt alone again. Last night she had him into her flat: it was big and had fitted white carpets and a bed with a padded white leather head-board. She wore a black filmy negligee and her kindness to Tom thickened his throat as he remembered it. He felt she had betrayed him by not being there. And again after work they climbed up, but still there was nothing to be seen of her. Stanley kept repeating that if it was as hot as this tomorrow he wasn't going to work and that's all there was to it. But they were all there next day. By ten the temperature was in the middle seventies, and it was eighty long before noon. Harry went to the foreman to say it was impossible to work on the leads in that heat; but the foreman said there was nothing else he could put them on, and they'd have to. At midday they stood, silent, watching the skylight on her roof open, and then she slowly emerged in her white gown, holding a bundle of blanket. She looked at them, gravely, then went to the part of the roof where she was hidden from them. Tom was pleased. He felt she was more his when the other men couldn't see her. They had taken off their shirts and vests, but now they put them back again, for they felt the sun bruising their flesh. "She must have the hide of a rhino," said Stanley, tugging at guttering and swearing. They stopped work, and sat in the shade, moving around behind chimney stacks. A woman came to water a yellow window box opposite them. She was middle-aged, wearing a flowered summer dress. Stanley said to her: "We need a drink more than them." She smiled and said: "Better drop down to the pub quick, it'll be closing in a minute." They exchanged pleasantries, and she left them with a smile and a wave. "Not like Lady Godiva," said Stanley. "She can give us a bit of a chat and a smile." 60

"You didn't whistle at her," said Tom, reproving. "Listen to him," said Stanley, "you didn't whistle, then?" But the boy felt as if he hadn't whistled, as if only Harry and Stanley had. He was making plans, when it was time to knock off work, to get left behind and somehow make his way over to the woman. The weather report said the hot spell was due to break, so he had to move quickly. But there was no chance of being left. The other two decided to knock off work at four, because they were exhausted. As they went down, Tom quickly climbed a parapet and hoisted himself higher by pulling his weight up a chimney. He caught a glimpse of her lying on her back, her knees up, eyes closed, a brown woman lolling in the sun. He slipped and clattered down, as Stanley looked for information: "She's gone down," he said. He felt as if he had protected her from Stanley, and that she must be grateful to him. He could feel the bond between the woman and himself. Next day, they stood around on the landing below the roof, reluctant to climb up into the heat. The woman who had lent Harry the blanket came out and offered them a cup of tea. They accepted gratefully, and sat around Mrs. Pritchett's kitchen an hour or so, chatting. She was married to an airline pilot. A smart blonde, of about thirty, she had an eye for the handsome sharp-faced Stanley; and the two teased each other while Harry sat in a corner, watching, indulgent, though his expression reminded Stanley that he was married. And young Tom felt envious of Stanley's ease in badinage; felt, too, that Stanley's getting off with Mrs. Pritchett left his romance with the woman on the roof safe and intact. "I thought they said the heat wave'd break," said Stanley, sullen, as the time

61 approached when they really would have to climb up into the sunlight. "You don't like it, then?" asked Mrs. Pritchett. "All right for some," said Stanley. "Nothing to do but lie about as if it was a beach up there. Do you ever go up?" "Went up once," said Mrs. Pritchett. "But it's a dirty place up there, and it's too hot." "Quite right too," said Stanley. Then they went up, leaving the cool neat little flat and the friendly Mrs. Pritchett. As soon as they were up they saw her. The three men looked at her, resentful at her ease in this punishing sun. Then Harry said, because of the expression on Stanley's face: "Come on, we've got to pretend to work, at least." They had to wrench another length of guttering that ran beside a parapet out of its bed, so that they could replace it. Stanley took it in his two hands, tugged, swore, stood up. "Fuck it," he said, and sat down under a chimney. He lit a cigarette. "Fuck them," he said. "What do they think we are, lizards? I've got blisters all over my hands." Then he jumped up and climbed over the roofs and stood with his back to them. He put his fingers either side of his mouth and let out a shrill whistle. Tom and Harry squatted, not looking at each other, watching him. They could just see the woman's head, the beginnings of her brown shoulders. Stanley whistled again. Then he began stamping with his feet, and whistled and yelled and screamed at the woman, his face getting scarlet. He seemed quite mad, as he stamped and whistled, while the woman did not move, she did not move a muscle. "Barmy," said Tom. "Yes," said Harry, disapproving.

Suddenly the older man came to a decision. It was, Tom knew, to save some sort of scandal or real trouble over the woman. Harry stood up and began packing tools into a length of oily cloth. "Stanley," he said, commanding. At first Stanley took no notice, but Harry said: "Stanley, we're packing it in, I'll tell Matthew." Stanley came back, cheeks mottled, eyes glaring. "Can't go on like this," said Harry. "It'll break in a day or so. I'm going to tell Matthew we've got sunstroke, and if he doesn't like, it's too bad." Even Harry sounded aggrieved, Tom noted. The small, competent man, the family man with his grey hair, who was never at a loss, sounded really off balance. "Come on," he said, angry. He fitted himself into the open square in the roof, and went down, watching his feet on the ladder. Then Stanley went, with not a glance at the woman. Then Tom, who, his throat beating with excitement, silently promised her on a backward glance: Wait for me, wait, I'm coming. On the pavement Stanley said: "I'm going home." He looked white now, so perhaps he really did have sunstroke. Harry went off to find the foreman, who was at work on the plumbing of some flats down the street. Tom slipped back, not into the building they had been working on, but the building on whose roof the woman lay. He went straight up, no one stopping him. The skylight stood open, with an iron ladder leading up. He emerged on to the roof a couple of yards from her. She sat up, pushing back her black hair with both hands. The scarf across her breasts bound them tight, and brown flesh bulged around it. Her legs were brown and smooth. She stared at him in silence. The boy stood grinning, foolish, claiming the tenderness he expected from her. "What do you want?" she asked.

"I . . . I came to . . . make your acquaintance," he stammered, grinning, pleading with her. They looked at each other, the slight, scarlet-faced excited boy, and the serious, nearly naked woman. Then, without a word, she lay down on her brown blanket, ignoring him. "You like the sun, do you?" he enquired of her glistening back. Not a word. He felt panic, thinking of how she had held him in her arms, stroked his hair, brought him where he sat, lordly, in her bed, a glass of some exhilarating liquor he had never tasted in life. He felt that if he knelt down, stroked her shoulders, her hair, she would turn and clasp him in her arms. He said: "The sun's all right for you, isn't it?" She raised her head, set her chin on two small fists. "Go away," she said. He did not move. "Listen," she said, in a slow reasonable voice, where anger was kept in check, though with difficulty; looking at him, her face weary with anger, "if you get a kick out of seeing women in bikinis, why don't you take an sixpenny bus ride to the Lido? You'd see dozens of them, without all this mountaineering." She hadn't understood him. He felt her unfairness pale him. He stammered: "But I like you, I've been watching you and . . ." "Thanks," she said, and dropped her face again, turned away from him. She lay there. He stood there. She said nothing. She had simply shut him out. He stood, saying nothing at all, for some minutes. He thought: She'll have to say something if I stay. But the minutes went past, with no sign of them in her, except in the tension or her back, her thighs, her arms—the tension of waiting for him to go. He looked up at the sky, where the sun seemed to spin in heat; and over the roofs where he and his mates had 64 been earlier. He could see the heat quivering where they had worked. And they expect us to work in these conditions! he thought, filled with righteous indignation. The woman hadn't moved. A bit of hot wind blew her black hair softly; it shone, and was iridescent. He remembered how he had stroked it last night. Resentment of her at last moved him off and away down the ladder, through the building, into the street. He got drunk then, in hatred of her. Next day when he woke the sky was grey. He looked at the wet grey and thought, vicious: Well, that's fixed you, hasn't it now? That's fixed you good and proper. The three men were at work early on the cool leads, surrounded by damp drizzling roofs where no one came to sun themselves, black roofs, slimy with rain. Because it was cool now, they would finish the job that day, if they hurried.

CHAPTER III SETTING, POINT OF VIEW AND THEME

A. SETTING TYPES OF SETTINGS  NEUTRAL SETTINGS: Often the setting in a work of fiction is little more than a reflection of the truth that things have to happen somewhere. The author's principal concern is with plot or character, and he sketches in only enough of the setting to lend the requisite verisimilitude to the action. Most of the fiction in popular magazines, for instance, has a vaguely contemporary setting, either urban or rural. Beyond giving us this much information, the author has no real interest in his setting and does not encourage such interest on our part. When this is true, we may speak of the setting of the story as ‖neutral." The use of the neutral setting is by no means limited to slick commercial fiction. Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, certainly one of the great novels in English, reveals little positive interest in setting. An inn is an inn, Fielding seems to believe, and a barnyard is a barnyard. There is no reason to single out whatever qualities may make the inns and

barnyards in one part of England different from their counterparts in other parts of the country. Limits to Neutrality: Even in the work of a writer like Fielding, however, the neutrality of the setting is not absolute. If his inns are typical inns and his barnyards typical barnyards, still he recognizes that some scenes are properly set in inns, others in barnyards. He recognizes, that is, the value of a certain appropriateness of setting to event. The same is true in modern commercial fiction. If a story in one of the monthly women's magazines has a rural setting, this sets up in the reader certain expectations regarding character and plot. To be sure, these expectations are often based on the crudest sort of stereotypes. Nevertheless, they indicate that an absolutely neutral setting is rare.

 THE SPIRITUAL SETTING: The expectations aroused in us by a rural setting suggest that few settings are absolutely neutral, because few settings are merely physical. For the modern American reader, a rural setting suggests not just grass, cows, and barns, but certain values 67 which must be called spiritual. As long as the setting is only vaguely and conventionally rural, the values suggested are likely to be vague and conventional as well. But as the physical setting becomes more specific and more vividly rendered, so does the spiritual setting. By the spiritual setting, then, we mean the values embodied in or implied by the physical setting. The phrase "a small mid-western town" may immediately suggest one set of values, while New York City suggests quite another. That this is not only true in fiction but extends beyond fiction may be seen from a recent court case. A judge awarded custody of a child to the child's grandparents on the grounds that the grandparents were "good, midwestern people." Apparently the term "midwestern‖ had for the judge a spiritual as well as geographical significance. Refining the Spiritual Setting: We would hardly expect a writer of any merit to accept the judge's easy identification of the midwestern with the virtuous. This is precisely the kind of stereotype the serious writer will seek to avoid. He will also, of course, seek to avoid the kind of reverse

stereotype which would make of "midwestern" a term of abuse. The serious writer will recognize, and will force us to recognize, that there is no easy relationship between a particular physical setting and virtue or vice. He will, by precise observation and careful rendering, refine the setting until we are aware€ of the complex of conflicting values that may inhere in a particular place and time. George Eliot's portrayal of life in a Victorian English town in her novel Middlemarch is one of the highest achievements of this sort in English fiction.

THE ELEMENTS OF SETTING: What are the elements of which setting is composed? They may be listed under four headings: (1) the actual geographical location, including topography, scenery, even the details of a room's interior; (2) the occupations and modes of day-to-day existence of the characters; (3) the time in which the action takes place, e.g., historical period, season of the year; (4) the religious, moral, intellectual, social, and emotional environment of the characters. FUNCTIONS OF SETTING 69

 SETTING AS METAPHOR: We have thus far been limiting our discussion to the literal presentation of setting. Even what we have called "spiritual setting" does not essentially involve a departure from the literal, since it extends only to the observable, if intangible, effects that time and place may have on character and events. Now we shall discuss a use of setting that involves extra-literal elements. Sometimes in fictions we encounter details of setting that seem to function as a projection or objectification of internal states of characters of pervasive spiritual condition. For instance, the fog that lingers so oppressively in Charles Dickens‘ Bleak House serves as kind of metaphor for the spiritual malaise and confusion of the characters. This is not the same as what we call the spiritual setting. It is not the fog that has contributed to character malaise. If anything, it is the other way round. But not quite, of course. Only in fantasy could a writer ask us to believe that character‘s internal state could create an external fog. The fog in Bleak House is as truly there as the town in Middlemarch. But George Elliot asks us to observe the spiritual and emotional effects of the town on the 70

individual, while Dickens asks us to see the fog as a metaphor (i.e., an implied comparison) for the individual‘s spiritual and emotional state.

 SETTING AS DYNAMIC: what has been said should indicate that setting need not mean merely a static backdrop before which the action unfolds itself. Setting may thrust itself dynamically into the action, affecting events and being in turn affected by them. Until setting seems to assume the role of a major character. Our original definition of setting as a point in time, and space therefore needs some development. For time and space are not themselves neutral. To be born into one century rather than another, in one region rather than another, can have the profoundest effects on every aspect of a person's life. The same attitude may mark a man as a rebel in one generation, a reactionary in the next; a hero in one country, a traitor in another.

B. DEFINING POINT OF VIEW WHAT POINT OF VIEW IS NOT: It may be best to begin by distinguishing the meaning of point of view in literary terms from other meanings that may be assigned to the same phrase. If you are asked for your point of view on a subject, what do you understand by the request? Chances are' you conclude you're being asked to express your opinions or attitudes. This is, at least,-one sense of point of view. It is not, however, the sense we have in mind when we speak of point of view in fiction.

AN ANALOGY: Let's try an analogy. Let's compare point of view in fiction with point of view in purely physical terms. If I stand directly in front of you, I can't see your shoulder blades. If I want to see your shoulder blades, one of us has to move. That is, I have to look at you from another point of view. In short, from any single physical point of view, there are some things I can see, and some things I can not.

THE EYEWITNESS: Now let's imagine that an accident has occurred, two cars have collided. There are four eyewitnesses to the accident. An investigating officer questions the witnesses. He also questions the drivers of the two cars and a passenger who was in one of the cars. He questions seven people in all. And he finds that he has seven quite different accounts of what happened. Let's make clear that nobody is lying. Each person is telling the truth to the best of his ability. Why, then, don't their stories coincide in all details? Because each is speaking from his own point of view. When we say this, we mean in part that each Person saw the accident from a different point of view in physical terms. One witness was on one side of the street, another on the other side, and so on. But we mean a little more. A witness who just happened to be passing by is not involved in the accident in the same way that the drivers are. Relatively speaking, the passerby's involvement is rather remote. The passenger is certainly more immediately involved than a casual onlooker. But he is not involved in the same way as the driver, either.

Whose story is likely to be most reliable? Well, the drivers were most directly involved, but their very involvement may make them unreliable because they can't be entirely objective. A passerby would probably be more objective, but might have observed less. The passenger's account would be useful but limited. In short, no single account could be expected to tell the whole story, yet each will provide something that the others lack. The only account that could give the whole story is God's, and that is not likely to be available.

THE AUTHOR'S POWER: In fiction, however, something like a Godlike view of things can be available. For the author‘s relation to the world he creates in fiction is, after all, similar to God's relation to His created universe. That is, the author is the ultimate source of being of every person, place, thing, and event in his work and knows all there is to know about these creatures of his imagination. But he must decide whether he will exploit his special knowledge. He must, that is, find the point of view most appropriate to the story he wants to tell. 74

POSSIBLE POINTS OF VIEW  FIRST PERSON OR THIRD PERSON?: A story may be told from the inside or the outside. When we speak of a story told from the inside, we mean a story told by one of the participants or characters in the story. Stories told from the inside are spoken of as examples of first-person narration. Since the narrator naturally uses the first personal pronoun ―I" in referring to himself. Stories told from the outside, by a usually nameless narrator who may be more or less closely identified with the author, are spoken of as examples of third person narration, since the narrator will rarely refer to himself at all (exceptions are found mainly in novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and refers to the characters of the story in the third person.  OMNISCIENT OR LIMITED?: The distinction between first-person and third-person narration is commonly made and has its uses. But distinction based merely on grammatical form is likely in itself to be superficial' (we shall see, however, that this apparently superficial distinction may have significant implications.) A still more

basic distinction is that between omniscient and limited narration.  THE OMNISCIENT NARRATOR: The author who chooses to exploit his Godlike knowledge of the fictional universe he has created will employ the omniscient narrator. Within the framework of the work of fiction, the omniscient narrator knows, simply, everything. He can at will enter the mind of any character and tell the reader directly what the character is thinking. He can at one moment be in the city, at the next in the country. In one paragraph he can be with us in the present, in the next he can take us into the past. The only motive required for his moves from mind to mind, from place to place, front time to time, is the desire to tell the story as well as possible. Thackeray's Vanity Fair is one of the classic examples in English fiction of the use of the omniscient narrator. Thackeray carries this technique very far indeed, for his narrator not only knows everything about the people and events of the story; he knows a good deal about the world in general as well and frequently interrupts the narrative for the Purpose of introducing, sometimes seriously, 76 sometimes ironically, bits of moral or philosophical reflection. Such interruptions are not a necessary part of the technique of omniscient narration. They are seldom to be found in more modern novels using this technique. For the mark of the omniscient narrator is not his philosophizing, but his faculty of knowing all. The omniscient technique is essentially a third-person technique. Even when, as in Vanity Fair, the narrator occasionally refers to himself in the first person, the characters in the story he narrates remain firmly in the third person.

The Advantages of Omniscience: In a sense, omniscient narration is the most natural of ail narrative techniques. After all, the author is, with regard to his work, omniscient. Any pretense to limitations on his knowledge of the characters he has himself created is clearly artificial. And because omniscient narration is the most natural form, it may be for many writers the most comfortable form.

In addition, omniscient narration is a highly flexible technique. As we have suggested, in omniscient narration, there are virtually no limits to what the omniscient narrator can tell us. He can always give us just what the story demands and need have no other concern.

The Disadvantages of Omniscience: Although omniscient narration is, in one sense, a particularly natural technique, it is in another sense an especially unnatural one. For in life, after all, there are no omniscient people. The narrator who knows and tells as much as he likes is purely a convention of literature. For those who regard ―naturalness" as a virtue in literature, then, omniscience is not always the most desirable technique. Furthermore, the very flexibility of omniscient narration, while certainly a virtue in itself, can present problems. In the hands of an insufficiently disciplined writer, omniscient narration can tend to looseness and incoherence, since the technique does not impose discipline on a writer.

LIMITED NARRATION: The alternative to the omniscient narrator is the limited narrator. As has been implied, limited narration is always artificial, since there are in truth no limit to an author's knowledge of his own creation. Still, art is in part a matter of artifice, and the artifice of limited narration offers a number of advantages to the writer of fiction. It also has its disadvantages, of course, and we shall examine some of them as well.

THE NARRATOR: The limited narrator is, simply, a narrator who doesn‘t know everything. He may appear both in stories told from the inside (firs-person narration) and in stories told from the outside (third-person narration). It is when we turn to the limited narrator that the matter of point of view begins to take on major importance. In a sense, the omniscient author has no point of view. Able to observe the action from all sides at once, and not personally involved in it, he simply sees things as they are-at least, as they are in the imaginary world of the story.

Protagonist as Narrator: The omniscient narrator, like God, has no point of view. But characters, like people, have points of view. And when the story is told, not by an omniscient narrator serenely and disinterestedly viewing the action from above, but by one of the characters, then we may clearly say the story is told from a particular point of view. The story may be told, for instance, by protagonist or main character. In this case, it is told from his point of view. We see it only what he sees, and we see it only as he sees it. The use of the protagonist as narrator has certain obvious advantages. It corresponds very closely to the reader's experience of life, for each of us is the protagonist in a first-person story. Like the narrator-protagonist we know ourselves from the inside others only from the outside. I know my own thoughts directly. The thoughts of others I must infer from their words and actions. Therefore, the use of the protagonist as narrator, telling his own story in the first person, has the advantages of immediacy and the sense of life.

A further advantage of this method is that it can make a positive contribution to the overall unity of the work. That he must include in his story only what the narrator can be expected to know gives the author a valuable principle of selection and helps him to avoid the looseness sometimes associated with omniscient narration. The advantages of telling the story from the point of view of the protagonist suggest some of the disadvantages connected with the method. What in some stories may be a source of immediacy, intensity, and unity can in others be simply an unfortunate restriction. The author may be frustrated to find that he can include in the story only what his narrator may be unexpected to know. If he has chosen his point of view unwisely, the author may resort excessively to tricks for introducing additional information. He may, for instance, rely too heavily on letters, telephone calls, and conversations between his protagonist-narrator and other characters to convey information. All of these devices are legitimate in themselves, but excessive reliance on them becomes too obviously a mechanical solution to a

81 technical problem, distracting our attention from the story to the author's difficulties in writing it. There are also problems that arise from the fact that in a story told by the protagonist we are in a sense locked within the mind of the protagonist. This is not in itself a flaw, but it suggests that this method may not be suitable to all subjects. For instance, moral judgment of the protagonist is difficult to handle in a story told by the protagonist, unless the reader can be convinced that the protagonist is more given than most of us to self-analysis and self-evaluation. Even Henry James, one of the masters of point of view, fails in his story "The Aspern Papers" to solve the problem of how to incorporate a moral attitude towards the protagonist into a story told by the protagonist. We are left, in this generally remarkable story, with the sense that James has tried to make this point of view do more than it can. Protagonist as Viewpoint Character: Closely related to the point of view we have been discussing is that associated with "third-person limited" narration. In this technique the story is told from the outside by a narrator who, like the 82 omniscient narrator, is not himself a character in the story he narrates. But in the third-person limited technique, the narrator is not omniscient. In the form of third-person limited we are not concerned with, the narrator knows all there is to know about one character. Beyond that, he knows only what this one character knows. The controlling point of view is that of the character, who is therefore referred to by critics as the viewpoint character. The viewpoint character may be the protagonist, in which case this method is very close to the first-person technique discussed above. The principal difference is that in the first- person technique narrator and protagonist are one and the same, while in the third-person technique they remain clearly distinguished. This difference has important implications. The narrator in a third-person limited story is always more or less detached from the viewpoint character. This detachment presents an opportunity for kinds of irony, evaluation, interpretation not possible in first-person narration. Consider, for instance, the following brief passage from Henry James's

83 novel The Ambassadors. "Strether" is Lambert Strether, the novel's Protagonist and viewpoint character: Many things came over him, and one of them was that he should doubtless presently know whether he had been shallow or sharp. Another was that the balcony in question didn't somehow show as a convenience easy to surrender. Poor Strether had at this very moment to recognize, the truth that, wherever one paused in Paris, the imagination, before one could stop it, reacted. There is nothing in the first two sentences of this passage that could not, with the necessary changes in grammatical form, be included in a story told in the first person. But at the word "Poor," the first word in the third sentence, narrator and viewpoint character part company. "Poor" is the narrator's comment on the viewpoint character, and this kind of comment is, of course, impossible in first-person narration. Apart from this important distinction, the two points of view have much in common and share many of the same advantages and disadvantages. In third-person limited, the author must restrict himself to what might be known by his viewpoint character, and this can be either a valuable 84

discipline or a frustrating restriction, depending on the temperament of the author and the nature of his material.

C. THE MEANING OF THEME To put the matter simply, theme is the meaning of the story. But any experienced reader of fiction will realize that this is not a very informative definition, and even less experienced readers, upon thinking it over, may begin to wonder in what sense a story can mean anything. Our definition, then, is only a first step towards understanding what theme is. WHAT THEME lS NOT: We may more closely approach the meaning of theme if we devote some attention to what theme is not. Theme is not the moral of the story, it is not the subject, and although I have defined it as the meaning of the story, it is not what most people have in mind when they speak of "what the story really means." Theme and the Moral of the Story: One doesn't hear much talk about the moral of the story these days. The phra se is used occasionally, but most of the time in a context that makes clear it's being used ironically. But

85 one does hear so much about theme, that one may wonder if "theme" isn't just a sophisticates' word for moral. If we examine the way both words have been used, we find that they don't mean quite the same thing. By the moral of the story we usually mean a piece of rather practical moral advice that can be derived from the story. The moral must be rather simple, for it must be pretty readily applicable to the readers' own conduct. The word theme, as used by most critics, also means something that can be derived from the story, and is in that sense rather like a moral. But a theme can be a good deal more complex than a moral and may in fact have no direct value as advice at all. We may conclude that a moral is one of the simpler kinds of theme, while not all themes are morals. Theme and Subject: The theme of a story is not identical with the subject of the story---at least, not as we'll use the term "theme" in our discussion. Some critics, it is true, do seem to regard the two terms as synonymous.

DISCOVERING THEME THE SEARCH FOR THEME: Theme, then; is the total meaning discovered by the writer in process of writing and by the reader in the process of reading. The statement of theme in a sentence or two that one, may make while discussing story can be no more than a useful simplification, a way of pointing to the more complex experience of the story as a whole. If this is so, then the process of discovering theme must be a complex one. There is no easy way to it. We can not, for instance, ask the writer what his theme is. If he answers us at all (he probably won‘t), he can give us, as we have seen, only a simplification of the total meaning of his work. If the theme could be so easily expressed, he wouldn‘t have had to write the story. We can discover the theme of a story only by a thorough and responsive reading of the story, involving a constant awareness of the relations among the parts of the story and of the relation of parts to whole. What follows is a discussion of the things to which a reader must give his attention in the search for theme. 87

THEME AND CHARACTER: As a major element in fiction, character is obviously of major importance for theme. One matter to be kept in mind in reading is the kind of characters the story deals with. If a writer like Henry James seems characteristically drawn to highly sensitive highly articulate men and women, we may feel justified in assuming that he finds a special value in the lives of such people, that they mean something to him. If a writer like Nelson Algren, on the other hand populates his fictional world largely with pimps, streetwalkers, drug addicts, sex deviates, and petty thieves, this must indicate that Algren regards the live of these outcasts as significant. F. Scott Fitzgerald's fascination with the very rich suggests a great deal about the meaning experience has for him.

PLOT AND THEME: Plot is what the characters do and what happens to them. A first question about plot and theme is whether the author's characters do things, or whether things happen to them. The characters of Henry Fielding, on the one hand, do things, while things tend to happen to the character of Thomas Hardy and Theodore Dreiser. This difference 88 indicates something about the author's view of the extent to which man can control his destiny. We must be prepared, of course, for a highly complex mixture of these two possibilities. We must also ask what kind of things the characters do and what kind of things happen to them. The characters of Hemingway engage extensively in physical action, in the life of the sense, while the principal actions in the fiction of Henry James tends to be acts of intellect and conscience. Such tendencies suggest something about the author's sense of what kind of actions are most significant and most revealing.

Further Reading ALICE WALKER b.1944, American A native of Eatonton, Georgia, Alice Malsenior walker was the eighth child of a farm couple. Her father was a share copper and dairy farmer and her mother worked as a field hand and domestic. On growing up in the South, walker has observed, "I was curious to know why people in families (specifically black family) are often cruel to each other and how much of this cruelty is caused by outside forces such as various social injustices, segregation, unemployment, etc.‖ When Walker was eight she was accidentally wounded by a pellet from a BB gun and lost of the use of her right eye because the family had no car to take her to a doctor. Her injured eye was covered by a scar until she was fourteen, and Walker has noted that her handicap may have ironically made her a writer, causing her to become withdrawn and observant of other people‘s actions. After the accident she became an assiduous diarist and reader, "Books became my world,‖ she once recalled, ―because the world I was in was very hard.‖

A scholarship student, Walker attended Atlanta's Spelman college for two years, transferring to Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, from which she graduated in 1965. While working in the civil rights movement, she met a young Jewish lawyer, Melvyn Leventhal. In 1967 they, settled in Jackson, Mississippi, the first legally married interracial couple in town. The couple moved to New York in the mid-I970s and later divorced.

Walker began her career as a poet, publishing her first book; once, in l968 and eventually following it with six more collections. She early exhibited an awareness of her forbears in the Harlem Renaissance, editing a collection of the writings of Zora Neale Hurston---at the time badly neglected figure---and also publishing a study of the works of Langston Hughes. From 1980 to 1984 she ran Wild Tree Press, of which she was cofounder. She has also published several collections of essay, among them ln Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), in which she recalls her mother and addresses her own daughter Rebecca. (Walker cointed the term ―Womanist‖ to describe her stance as a black feminist.) Walker‘s literary efforts 91 have branched into children‘s book and biography as well but she became known to a select but devoted circle reader through her fiction: two short story collections, ln Love and Trouble (1973) and You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down (1981); and her early novels, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) and Meridian (1976),which has been called one of the most accurate fictional depiction of the civil rights movement and which has often been adopted as a text in courses African-American history.

Walker broke through wider readership with The Color Purple (1982). An epistolary novel largerly written in dialect, it depicts a rural African-American woman's attempt to win both racial and sexual equality. Gloria Steinem observed in Ms. that it could be the kind of popular and literary event that transforms an intense reputation into a national one, and Newsweek heralded the book as "an American novel of permanent importance." In 1983 The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1985 it was made into a motion picture by Steven Spielberg. Walker discusses how her own screenplay for the film was rejected and how she dealt with the controversy that surrounded the movie in 92 the memoir The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult (1996).

Walker‘s later novels have included The Temple of My Familiar (1989); Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), which takes as its subject the controversial practice of ritual female circumcision among African, Asian, and Middle Eastern culture; and by the Light of My Father’s Smile (1995), which explores Walker's current interests in the relationship between sexuality and spirituality. These works have continued to display her unique brand of feminism, her committed social activism, and her remarkable versatility. Over the year, Walker has taught and lectured at many universities. She currently lives in northern California.

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CHAPTER IV RHYTHM, RHYME AND METRICS IN POETRY

A. RHYTHM IN POETRY: Rhythm in poetry is created by the patterns of repeated sounds---in terms of both duration and quality---and ideas. We will begin our investigation of versification with a discussion in accent; when stress is placed on a word, accent result. But before we do this, the reader should try to ―feel‖ the accent as creates rhythm. If we read some stanzas from Coloridge‘s ―The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,‖ for example, we immediately should hear the rhythm: The sun came up upon the left, Out of the sea came he! And he shone bright, and on the right, Went down into the sea

Higher and higher every day, Till over the mast at noon--- The wedding-Guest here beat his breast, For he heard the loud bassoon.

The bride hath paced into the hall, Red as rose is she; Nodding their heads before her goes The merry ministresly.

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The wedding-Guest he beat her breast, Yet he cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner.

The pattern of sound have an enchanting effect. The accent and the final sound of second line in the third stanza ―Red as arose is she,‖ echoes the second line in the first stanza ―Out of the she came he!‖ The general proliferation of ―ee‖ sounds, and repetition of the words Wedding-Guest and breast contribute equally to the flowing sound of the poem, and the chanting effect of internal rhyme. The point is that rhythm is created out the pattern use of various words, sounds, and accents which establish in our mind a collection of associations of sound and meaning. Coloridge‘s poem has seven parts and throughout, the rhythm gain momentum. We have a strong emotional response to the poem because we are almost literally swept up in its even, chant-like flow. The pattern is established in the repetition of lines having the same number of syllables, as well as by the steady use of accent in the same way. And this leads us to our first major consideration.

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Accent: all poetry is written in some particular meter; that is, poems are made from a collection of lines which have a certain number of syllables, some of which are accented (receive stress) and some of which are not (receive no stress). We scan a line of poetry when we mark over each word whether or not it should be accented: a slanted dash ( / ) indicates that a syllable is to be stressed while one that is not to be stressed while one that is not to be stressed is marked ᵕ . Thus, the following line poetry, for example, scans like this:

ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / How vainly men themselves amaze Or again,

ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / The sword, the banner, and the field.

The matter of a line is usually repeated.

ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / How vainly men themselves amaze

ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / To win the palm, the oak, or bays;

ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / And their uncessant labors see

ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / Crown‘d from some single herb of tree

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ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / Whose short and narrow verged shade

ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / Does prudently their toils upraid; (Marvell)

POETIC FEET: Most readers will have noticed that the line seems to be divided into a number of repeated units combining the same a number of accented and unaccented syllables. This unit is known as poetic foot; each line of poetry therefore has certain number of poetic feet. As the pattern of one foot is repeated or varied in the next, a pattern for the entire line and then for the poem is established. Feet containing different numbers of syllables, accented and unaccented, have different names. The following are most common.

A. IAMBIC: The iambic foot (an iamb) is composed of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. The line we have looked at, for example, has four iambic feet:

ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / How vain | ly men | themselves | a maze

This line has five iambic feet:

ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / The God | dess with | a dis | con ten | ted air

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B. TROCHAIC: The trochaic foot (a trochee) is reverse of an iambic foot. The Trochaic foot, in other words, is made up to two syllables, the first one stressed and the second one unstressed. The following line has four trochaic feet:

/ ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ Cast him | out u | pon the | wa ters

C. DACTYLIC: Not all poetic feet have two syllables. The dactylic foot (a dactyl), for example, is composed of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. The following line has two dactylic feet:

/ ᵕ ᵕ ᵕ ᵕ Car ry her | care ful ly

D. ANAPESTIC : The reverse of a dactylic foot is an anapestic foot (an anapest); in other words, it is composed of two unstressed syllables followed by one that is stressed. The following line has three anapestic feet:

ᵕ ᵕ / ᵕ ᵕ / ᵕ ᵕ / There is no | thing as Big | as a Man.

E. SPONDAIC: A fifth kind of foot has two stressed and no unstressed syllable; the emphasis, in other words, is on one

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plane. This is called a spondaic foot ( a spondee); the following line has two spondaic feet: / / / / Jump, run, | hide, shout.

Most frequently, the spondaic foot occurs in isolation near the beginning of a line, for example, begins with a spondee and is followed by four iambs:

/ / ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / ᵕ / Milton! | thou shouldst | be liv | ing at | this hour

A student might do well to memorize the following review chart: KIND OF FOOT SYLLABLES A. Iambic 1 unaccented followed by 1 B. Trochaic unaccented 1 accented followed by 1 C. Dactylic unaccented D. Anapestic (Reverse of A) 1 accented followed by 2 E. spondaic unaccented 2 unaccented followed by 1 accented (Reverse of C) 2 accented

Metrical Lines: We have been examining lines containing different numbers of poetic feet. The number of feet contained in any given line determines its name. A line having only one

107 foot is referred to as monometer (mono, meaning one, plus meter). Similarly, a line of two feet is called dimeter, three feet, trimeter. A complete tables follows:

NUMBER OF FEET IN LINE NAME OF LINE 1 Monometer 2 Dimeter 3 Trimeter 4 Tetrameter 5 Pentameter 6 Hexameter 7 Heptameter 8 Octameter

Lines of over five feet, and lines of only one foot, it should be noted, are relatively rare. Lines of five feet are the most common.

COMPLETE DESCRIPTION OF POETIC LINES: When we know the names of the poetic feet and the name for lines having certain number of feet, we can name line properly, referring to both the kind of foot and the number of feet. To return to our opening line, for example, ―How vainly men themselves amaze,‖ we can see that it has four feet written in iambic measure; thus the line written in iambic tetrameter. The line ―The goddess with disconnected air‖ has five feet in iambic 108 measure and so is called a line of iambic pentameter. The line ―There is nothing as Big as Man,‖ has three feet of anapestic measure so we call it a line of anapestic trimeter. Usually a whole poem will follow a general pattern; the Marvell poem, for example, is written in iambic tetrameter. Although there may be variation of line length or foot, as long as the general pattern is the repetition of the same kind of line or foot, we can name the pattern of the whole poem. RISING AND FALLING METER: After identifying and naming metrical elements of poem, we can make more generalized statements about the way rhythm works. When the unaccented syllables come first for example, (as an iambic and anapestic feet), the verse is said to be written in rising meter as we are moving up towards the emphasis; conversely, when the stressed syllable is followed by unstressed syllables (as in trochaic and dactylic feet), the verse is said to be written in a falling meter, as we are sliding back and away from the emphasis. MASCULINE AND FAMININE ENDINGS: There are other concrete things which can be decided about the subtle variations in poem‘s structure. For example, if a line ends with extra, or 109 additional, unaccented syllable, it is said to have a ―soft‖ or feminine ending. If, on the other hand, the line ends on a hard, accented syllable, (not additional) it has a masculine ending. THE CAESURA: The pause in a line is referred to as a caesura and is often best discovery by reading the poem aloud. The caesura in the following line is quite obviously after the word Milton: Milton! Thou shouldst be living this hour.

It should be noted that not every line of poetry has a caesura and that it is not necessarily punctuated. The use of caesura affects the rhythm of the poem; the pace can be changed by the frequency of the use of caesura and the strength of punctuation used. END-STOPPED LINE; RUN-ON LINE: A Further distinction must be made between a line poetry which pauses most naturally at the end of a line, usually with a completed clause or with the ending of sentence, and a line of poetry which runs on past the end of the line into the next one before pausing naturally. The former is an end-stopped line and the latter is a run-on line. This letter is also known as an enjambment. An

110 example of an end-stopped line is the following: ―Inland, within a hollow vale, I stood,‖ an example of enjambment would be ―I shrunk; for verily the barrier flood/ Was like a lake.‖ The thought, or unit of composition, after which we pause, ends in the second line and not the first. Keeping in mind the techniques of basic versification which we have discussed so far, there are two verse forms basic to English poetry which we should examine. BLANK VERSE: Unrhymed iambic pentameter. The form was developed by the Italians and introduces into English literature during the Renaissance, first by Surrey in his translation of Virgil‘s Aeneid. Since there is no rhyme used, the units of thought form stanzaic divisions. Through the use of techniques like enjambement, end-stopped lines, etc. the poet is able to write verse unit without rhyme. The form became the standard mode of expression for dignified verse forms such as poetic drama and the epic. Shakespeare‘s play and Milton‘s Paradise Lost, as well as some twentieth-century poetry, are written in blank verse.

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FREE VERSE: Poetry composed in lines which are free of traditional patterns of rhyme and meter and whose rhythm is based, instead, on the stress resulting from the meaning of the line and its natural and punctuated pauses. Each line contains varying numbers and types of poetic feet; however, although the strict traditional patterns of versification are not followed, free verse van not be said to be formless. A pattern of Rhythm is established within the poem, and the lines move away from, and back away toward, this norm. Although the form has been most widely used by modern poets since the beginning of symbolist movement at the end of nineteenth century, poetry of this type was written by Hebrew psalmist, Goethe, Matthew Arnold, and others.

B. RHYME

PERFECT RHYME AND HALF-RHYME: Once we have observed the metrical patterns of a poem we should discuss its rhyme. That is, we must record the patterns of repetition of sounds as they are heard in the poem. This is not usually a difficult task, although certain poems depend for effect on very complex rhyme schemes. Perfect rhymes, sometimes called 112 exact rhymes, occur when the stressed vowels following differing consonant sounds are identical-slow and grow-and any following sounds are identical-fleet and street, buying and crying, bring and sing. The sound, not the spelling determines whether or not the sounds are identical. Half-rhyme or approximate rhyme occurs when the final consonant sounds of rhyming words are identical. The stressed vowel sounds and any preceding consonant sounds differ. The following lines from Keats' famous "Ode on a Grecian Urn" exhibit a pair of perfect rhymes and a pair of imperfect rhymes: Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

The Hess" sound is identical in the first and third lines, while the "irne" sound is identical in the second and fourth. The first and third lines are half-rhymes, since only the final consonant sounds are identical. The second and fourth lines are perfect rhymes; the stressed vowel sounds are identical and the following consonant sounds are both the same.

The first four lines of the second stanza of Keats' poem exhibit

113 two pair of half-rhyme, or approximate rhyme:

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on: Not to the sensual ear, but, more eadear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

We can see that "heard" and "dear'd" are not identical sounds; nor are "on" and "tone." The initial consonants, and the vowel sounds differ, but in each pair, the final consonant sound is identical. It is not irregular, incidentally, for a poet to combine perfect and imperfect rhymes. Sometimes the meaning calls for an effect best achieved by an imperfectly rhyming pair of sounds.

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CHAPTER V FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE IN POETRY

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: language which employs various figures of speech. Some examples are metaphor, simile, antithesis, hyperbole, and. paradox. In general, figurative language is that kind of language which departs from the language employed in the traditional, literal ways of describing persons or objects. Using figurative language is making imaginative descriptions in fresh ways. It is usually immediately obvious whether a writer is using figurative or literal language. FORESHADOWING: the method of giving hints in advance of what is to come later. Sometimes a poet will suggest-often through imagery--early in the poem what will happen later in the poem. This suggestion, similar to a movie "preview," is foreshadowing, sometimes called adumbration. FORM: the organization of the parts of a poem into a whole. If a poem has fourteen lines it is said to have the form of a sonnet. In literature we usually discuss form as if we were picturing the total pattern, organization and effect of a poem. Form is the complete package which has a distinguishable content. In a poem we are usually able to describe the details of the form 115 with the various tools of versification discussed in the preceding chapter. Some forms, recurring throughout literature, become conventional forms. The sonnet, the roundel, the hymn, the ode, the eulogy and the occasional poem are all established or conventional literary forms. FRAME OF REFERENCE: the background of a poem. We consider a poem "in context" or "within a frame of reference." If we want to discuss a poem about a fairy princess we must know something about fairy-princess poems in general. If we are studying an Anglo-Saxon poem about monasteries, we must know something about other similar poems and about the conventional Anglo-Saxon attitudes toward monasteries. In other words, we must place the poem within the proper philosophical, thematic, or historical dimensions. HYPERBOLE: a figure of speech which employs exaggeration. Hyperbole differs from exaggeration in that it is extreme or excessive. Sometimes it is used for comic purposes, but more often it is used seriously. Hyperbole can produce a very dramatic effect; Shakespeare uses hyperbole in a sonnet: In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes, For they in thee a thousand errors note,

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The idea of seeing a thousand errors is of course an exaggeration or hyperbolic expression of the poet's glimpses of his lady's imperfection. IMAGERY: images, pictures, or sensory content, which we find in a poem. Images are fanciful or imaginative descriptions of people or objects stated in terms of our senses. When we discuss the imagery of a poem, we look at each of the images in particular and then try to arrive at some general understanding of what may or may not be a pattern of imagery. For example, we can refer to the pattern of disease imagery in Hamlet, to the imagery of light in the religious poetry of Vaughan, etc. When a pattern of imagery is found in various works by the same poet, or in various parts of a long poem or play, we can speak of recurrent patterns of imagery. Usually critics attempt to relate the various images to each other in order to arrive at a greater, less obvious (hidden) meaning in a poem. There is always a certain amount of mystery surrounding images because we can never articulate their precise meaning. When we study the imagery of a poem we are studying the entire world in which the meaning of the poem dwells. This is the world that the poet has

117 carefully created through his decision to select certain words and images rather than others. IRONY: results from the contrast between the actual meaning of a word or statement and the suggestion of another meaning. The intended implications are often actually a mockery of what is literally being stated. Sarcasm is a heavier-handed irony, usually harsh or biting, while irony can be light, comic, and playful. When a poet uses irony he is playing with the reader, asking him, as it were, to share in a private joke. The poet says one thing knowing very well that it will be read as if he were saying something else. This is delightful and refreshing because we are, for a brief moment, brought directly into the company of the poet. This effect is not limited to verbal irony. There can be irony in a situation, in organization, in a work as a whole, etc.; it is one of the most frequently recurring devices in poetry. LYRICAL: referred originally to lyric Poetry, that is, to poetry written to be sung to a lyre. However, the term "lyric" now designates a short poem which emphasizes the expression of the individual's feelings and emotions rather than external events or attitudes. When we speak of a line of poetry, or a whole poem, as being lyrical, we mean that it seems to express 118 the personal feelings of the poet; it is as if he were singing by himself and we were allowed to overhear or eavesdrop. There are various forms of lyric such as the sonnet and the roundel, but in each case we witness strong feelings of self-expression. Although lyrical poems are no longer necessarily sung, they frequently retain their musical quality. MEANING: though perhaps too obvious a term to be included here, is all-important in the analysis of poetry and all students would do well to ponder the word from time to time. When we talk about the meaning of a poem, we are talking primarily about the significance of its message. What, we ask, is the poet trying to convey to us? To what places- either physical or mental-is he directing our attention? The intended interpretations are all part of meaning. We must try to relate meaning to connotations; which did the author want to evoke, and which have we fished up from the pools of our private experience? METAPHOR: the figure of speech which compares one thing to another directly. Usually a metaphor is created through the use of some form of the verb "to be." For instance, if we say, "life is a hungry animal," hungry animal has become a metaphor 119 for life. If a poet writes, "my love is a bird, flying in all directions," the bird has become a metaphor of the poet's love. When the poet uses metaphor he transfers the qualities and associations of one object to another in order to make the latter more vivid in our mind. The metaphor in other words establishes an analogy between objects without actually saying that it is establishing this contrast. A simile, in contrast, calls attention to the comparison through the use of the word "like" or "as." If a poet writes, for example, "I was as happy as a lark," he is using a simile. He is making a comparison between his happiness and that of a lark; he is telling us, in so many words, that the best way for him to express his happiness is to compare it to that of a lark. While a metaphor directly suggests comparison of two things by creating an equation, a simile, in contrast, calls attention to the comparison through the use of the word "like" or "as." In summary, a simile says that one thing is "like" something else, while a metaphor states that something is something else. The comparisons made by metaphors are thus usually more subtle than those made by similes.

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METONYMY: The substitution of a word closely associated with another word in place of that other word. If, for example, we speak of the government as the "White House," we are using metonymy. When a poet speaks consistently of a beloved, he is using metonymy. MOOD: the creation of an atmosphere through the proliferation of certain common emotions. If everyone in a poem is sad or speaks of his sadness, for example, there is a mood of sadness dominating the atmosphere or world of the poem. Mood is thus the prevailing tone in a poem and this tone is established by the accumulation of a set of emotions. We can have a "gay" or "pensive" mood, or a mood of love. There is, in short, a mood for every set of generalized emotions. MOTIF: a core experience around which an entire poem or work of literature can be developed. The motif, in other words, is the almost irreducible skeleton of the narration. Some conventional motifs would be the rape of a virgin, a young man killing himself after his love has died (throwing himself over a cliff would of course be even better), or a fairy princess riding off with a humble peasant (if he is ugly and she beautiful, again this is preferable; if he later turns into a handsome prince, well 121

... ). Motifs describe the basic centers of narrated action. The ones mentioned-above are folk-lore motifs; a motif must not necessarily have this quality however. A motif, therefore, is very .similar to a theme, which explains the basic center of meaning. OBJECTIVE: impersonal, detached, and unprejudiced. When we make an objective appraisal of a work of art we are considering what is factual, devoid of personal interpretation. An objective treatment of a poem tries merely to deal with what is literal, implicit, or sometimes even obvious. In objectivity we find little emotion or personal distortion of the meaning. OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE: a popular phrase coined by T. S. Eliot. He meant it to apply to a description of a group of events, or a situation, which automatically arouses certain emotional responses in the reader. That is, there is no need for a personal intrusion by the poet because the mere things being described will objectively convey the meaning. It is a simple question of stimulus and response; when confronted with a certain set or group of objects or actions, a reader will immediately respond in the only way possible; thus Eliot considered the objective correlative to be the main mode of 122 artistic expression. PARADOX: results when a poet presents a pair of ideas, words, images or attitudes which are, or appear to be, self- contradictory. However, while it may appear that these opposites are contradictory, paradox often underlines the possibility that both may be true. Paradox is employed in poetry primarily as a device of emphasis, of drawing attention to something. As with cacophony---incompatible sounds--- paradox---incompatible ideas---shocks or jolts us to attention. Thus paradox, like cacophony, can produce dramatic and worthwhile effects. PARALLELISM: a principle advocating that ideas of equal importance or significance should be treated at equal length within a poem. If, for example, one wrote a poem which was intended to survey the weaknesses of men and women, and yet only devoted one third as much space and thought to women as it did to men, then there would be a lack of parallelism. Parts of a work should be parallel with each other so that there is no extreme disproportion in emphasis. It would be as great a fault of course to devote equal thinking and space to concepts which were not equally important. If a poem was purportedly about a 123 barn and yet the poet spent most of his time describing the farmer who owned the barn, there would again be a lack of parallelism; in short, parallelism requires equal treatment for equally important aspects of the matter under consideration. PARODY: imitating the work of others in order to amuse. When one undertakes a parody, one tries to express humorously what some other writer either has expressed, or would express, seriously. In order to write a parody, a mockery of another author's style, language, and subject-matter, one must be fully knowledgeable with regard to the author being parodied. Unskillful parody is uninteresting and uninspired. Excellent and entertaining parody results when the writer has, in effect, done his homework---learned all of the details of the various nuances of another author's style. Like a caricature, a parody emphasizes the obvious characteristics for the sake of humor. PATHOS: that aspect of certain poems which produces in the reader a response of pity and sorrow. We sometimes find a situation or character pathetic because there seems to be expressive---and sometimes unjustified---grief. This is different from the tragic sorrow we feel for certain characters in tragedies whose grief is understandably great. To be pathetic is not 124 particularly desirable, but to be bathetic is even worse (see bathos). PERSONA: The character in a poem or play, but more specifically, the voice of the narrator or character in the poem: In other words, when we read a poem we are listening to a voice, but it may not necessarily be the real voice of the poet himself; instead, the poet has put on a mask. This voice is created by the poet and is not the voice of the poet. Often a young poet, for example, has narrated a poem as if he were an old man (see T. S. Eliot's Gerontion, for example). PERSONIFICATION: the process of assigning human characteristics to nonhuman objects, abstractions or ideas. Attributing personal form to such nonhuman objects and ideas is a standard rhetorical device in poetry. Thus we frequently find poets ad- dressing the moon as a lady, referring to her beauty. We talk about the lady beauty and about old man river. In allegorical dramas or poems certain characters are personifications of various qualities like virginity or virtue, evil or eternity, etc. The poet thus personifies qualities or describes them as if they were in fact people.

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POETIC LICENSE: the poet's "license" or privilege to do something unorthodox in terms of diction, rhyme, or meter. That is, under certain circumstances a poet may vary his rhyme suddenly without being thought to be a poor versifier; we give the poet the benefit of doubt and assume that he could have maintained a regularity of meter but that he instead deliberately decided to introduce a variation in order to produce some special effect. The poet, in other words, must be given some freedom within the formal pattern which he has chosen; we would not want the poet to be confined by his formal style. The effect to be gained momentarily becomes more important than the strict adherence to a formal pattern. POINT OF VIEW: quite literally refers to the way in which the author views his subject; from what point is his view? From what angle is he observing his subject? All dimensions-- - temporal, spatial, philosophical, etc.---have vantage points. Is the poet regarding something that has happened or existed in the past, or rather something that still is to happen or exist in the future? Is he describing an event from the point of view of someone who was there or of someone who has heard about it? In other words, when we consider point of view we must ask 126 as many questions as possible about the poet's attitude toward his material. RITUAL: the form of conducting worship of one kind or another; also, any ceremonial and/or often repeated action. In ritualistic deeds of worship, bizarre things transpire. The entire action of the ritual is said to be ceremonial. We discover many poets treating ritual because it is, in effect, a poetic activity and thus subject to imaginative interpretation and description. SARCASM: usually mean or vicious antagonism; it is not as clever as verbal irony. When one is sarcastic one is making an attack on someone or something. The method of this attack is usually to pretend to be making a compliment but, by the use of extremely sharp verbal irony, really to be making an insult. Sarcasm is the use of caustic or cruel remarks frequently presented by way of ironical statement. SATIRE: The technique of holding human vices, follies, stupidities, etc., up for contempt, usually with an aim to reform. It is usually directed at ideas, institutions, or governments, rather than at individuals. The satirist is less inclined to spew forth personal dissatisfaction than ideological disagreement. The sati-

127 rist tries to point out flaws through a humorous treatment. Jonathan Swift, incidentally, is considered the master satirist in the English language and a look at his humor and subjects will easily differentiate satire from sarcasm. SENSIBILITY: a word which has undergone a series of changes in meaning. When used in connection with literature the word bas nothing to do with whether or not something makes "sense" or is "sensible." It originally was a term used to describe the ability to respond emotionally to actions both good and bad; the eighteenth century considered this a virtue. It has since come to have a pejorative meaning-referring to all the bad qualities associated with sentimentalism. In current usage, sensibility is the name for the poet's sensitivity to sensory experience. T. S. Eliot made the phrase "dissociation of sensibility" popular in his essay on the Metaphysical poets. He used the phrase to refer to the unified sensibility, or union of thought and experience of which the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were capable; now, in contrast, this sensibility was divided. A keen sensibility implies an ability to feel one's thoughts, and Eliot felt that this ability has been lost.

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SIMILE: A simile is a direct comparison between things which are not particularly similar in their essence. A poet introduces a simile through a connecting word which signals that a comparison is being made; the most frequently used connectives are "like" and "as," but "than" is also used. If a poet writes, "she is lovelier than the ocean at dawn," he is announcing a comparison; he could also write, "she is like the ocean at dawn," or "she is as lovely as the ocean at dawn." In all three cases, the poet is presenting a simile which directs the reader's attention to a comparison which heightens the essence of the object or person in question; it is easier for us to sense the woman's loveliness through our sensing of the connotations of the loveliness of the ocean at dawn. If the poet draws a comparison without using an introductory connective such as '''like,'' "as," or "than," he is probably writing a metaphor. (See metaphor.) SUBJECTIVE: private, personal, emotional, or individual. When one reads any poem, one makes certain subjective responses to the poem. This is because every reader has a different experiental background. No two readers can share all of the same feeling about a poem; the ones they have but cannot share all subjective. When the term subjective is used to 129 describe a poem, we mean that the poem is filled with personal utterances. The poet is trying to explain his own private feelings and is giving a subjective picture of himself and his world. SYNECDOCHE: a particular form of metaphor. The technique of synecdoche uses a part in order to signify the whole. Just as a caricaturist draws people in abbreviated terms, presenting a few characteristic and important parts, so does the poet sometimes choose to present only a small detail-but an important one-rather than a full description of something in its entirety. It is important to remember that only the most essential part be used to represent the whole-for example, "galloping hooves" represents "galloping horses."

THEME: is the central concept developed in a poem. It is the basic idea which the poet is trying to convey and which, accordingly; he allows to direct his imagery: Most of the images, in other words, are designed to present the central theme, or main idea, of the poem. The theme is, in another light, the poet's reason for writing the poem in the first place. It is usually an abstract concept which becomes concrete through the idiom and imagery.

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Further Study Mirror by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.1 Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel only truthful— The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers. Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searches my reaches2 for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. I am important to her. She comes and goes.

1 Preconceptions: ideas formed beforehand 2 Reaches:depths 131

Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish. Questions 1. List five qualities that the speaker associates with itself. 2. What does the woman do every day with regard to the speaker? 3. According to the speaker, what is she searching for? 4. What has been ―drowned‖ in the speaker? What rises in its place? 5. In what ways are the candles and moon ‗liars‖? How does the speaker contrast these things to itself? 6. What is happening everyday to the woman? Why does she reacts as she does when she looks at the speaker?

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Cavalry Crossing a Ford by Walt Whitman

A line in long array where the wind betwixt green islands, They take a serpentine1 course, their arms flash in the sun—hark to the musical clank, Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop to drink, Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a picture, the negligent rest on the saddles, some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just entering the ford—while, Scarlet and blue and snowy white The guidon flags2 flutter gaily in the wind

Questions 1. Where does the poem take place? What action is described in the poem? 2. List three things that the speaker sees. What sounds does he hear? 3. What is the last thing the speaker mention?

1 Serpentine: winding 2 Guidon flags: military pennants 133

4. Prove that the speaker is physically far away from the procession? 5. What might the sound of armaments be called ―musical‖? In what sense might this image be ironic? 6. What point about war do you think Whitman is making in this poem?

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CHAPTER VI TYPES OF POETRY

Although all poetry shares certain common traits, poems can be divided into three basic categories. Narrative Poems tell stories. More concentrated than short stories, narrative poems focus on the crucial parts of an experience. Lyric Poems reveal private feelings. Most lyric poems are short and are marked by intense emotion and musical language. Dramatic poems, like plays, present characters speaking to themselves, to each other or to the reader. Dramatic poems often contain other dramatic elements such as dialogue and setting.

A. NARRATIVE POETRY A narrative poem tells a story in verse. However, because poetry is more concentrated than prose, a narrative poem may not follow the recognizable plot structure and sequence of events we usually see in prose narratives. The poet who tells a story is usually more concerned with creating a vivid and complete emotional effect. Therefore, a narrative poem may focus only on the most meaningful parts of a story. In reading

135 narrative poetry we often accept jumps of time, space and logic that we might find difficult to understand in more ―realistic‖ prose narratives. Long narratives poems with heroic subjects are known as epics. The best-known epics include the Illiad and Odyssey by the Greek poet Homer, the Aeneid by the Latin poet Virgil, the Divine Comedy by Italian poet Dante, and Paradise Lost by the British poet John Milton. One of the most popular forms of narrative poetry is the ballad, a short narrative with definite pattern of rhythm and rhyme. Folk ballads or popular ballads are usually anonymous; they circulate region before they are written down. Literary ballads are written by poets to imitate folk ballads. Poe‘s ―Eldorado‖ is an example of such a ballad. Here are one of the examples of a narrative poem written by Robert Frost; The Tuft of Flowers.

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The Tuft of Flowers by Robert Frost

I went to turn the grass once after one Who mowed it in the dew before the sun

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen Before I came to view the leveled scene.

I looked for him behind an isle of trees; 5 I listened for his whetstone1 on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown, And I must be, as he had been,—alone,

―As all must be,‖ I said within my heart, ―whether they work together or apart.‖ 10

But as I said it, swift there pass me by On noiseless wing a bewildered butterfly,

1 Whetstone: stone wheel used for sharpening a blade 137

Seeking with memories grown dim o‘er night Some resting flower of yesterday‘s delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round, 15 As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as eye could see, And then on tremulous wing come back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply, And would have turned to toss the grass to dry; 20

But he turned first, and led my eye to look As a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared Beside a reedy brook the scythe had barred.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus, 25 By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

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Not yet to draw one thought of ours to him, But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

The butterfly and I had lit upon, Nevertheless, a message from the dawn, 30

That made me hear the wakening birds around, And hear long scythe whispering to the ground,

And feel a spirit kindred to my own; So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid, 35 And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

―Men work together,‖ I told him from the heart, ―Whether they work together or apart.‖ 40

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Questions 1. What is the speaker doing in the beginning of the poem? Who has preceded him? 2. What does the speaker say in lines 9-10? To whom does he speak/ 3. What passes the speaker in the field? 4. Describe the speaker feelings in the first ten lines of the poem? 5. Contrast the statement in lines 9-10 with the speaker‘s words at the end of the poem? What do these lines mean? What has made the speaker change his mind? 6. What is the poem saying about the relationship between one person and another and between people and nature?

B. LYRIC POETRY A lyric poem is a brief, often musical expression of the speaker‘s emotion. In Ancient Greece, lyric poems were performed by individual poets who sang of private feelings and accompanied themselves on stringed instruments called lyres. Although poet no longer actually sing their own lyric poems, we still the term lyrics to the words of songs, and we still label as lyric any poem that is at heart an expression of feeling. Beyond expressing emotion in a few lines, lyric poetry follows no set pattern. Many lyric poems describe a particular 140 thing – a sunset, a face, a memory – that stirs the speaker‘s feelings. Some offer insights about human nature or about the place of human beings in the world. Most lyric poems use imaginative figures of speech and musical language. However, whatever form it takes, a lyric poem is a unified expression of feeling that allows the reader to share in the emotion that ―sings‖ in its line. The following poem by Wordsworth entitled My Heart Leaps Up is an example of a lyric poem. Read and study it carefully by answering the questions below it.

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My Heart Leaps Up By William Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child if father of the Man; And could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. Questions 1. What makes the speaker‘s heart leap up? 2. According to line 7, how is ―the Child‖ connected to ―the Man‖? 3. What hope does the speaker express in lines 8-9 about the days of his life? 4. Describe the emotion expressed by the speaker in the poem‘s opening. 5. Define the word piety. What do you think ―natural piety‖ means in this poem? 6. According to this poem, what should we preserve from our childhood?

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C. DRAMATIC POETRY A dramatic poem is a type of poem that uses one of several of the techniques associated with drama. All dramatic poems present characters, often in tense situations, who speak to silent listeners, to themselves, or directly to the reader. We can often find several elements off drama in a dramatic poem. Some dramatic poems establish their characters in vivid settings and shoe them engaged in action. In some cases two or more characters speak to one another, allowing readers to ―eavesdrop‖ like members of a theater audience. However, most dramatic poems concentrate on the character of one speaker, leaving the reader to fill in the other theatrical effects that would be supplied in a play. For example, dramatic poems do not always specify the circumstances in which the character speaks; readers are free to imagine such details. One of the most popular forms of dramatic poetry is the dramatic monologue, which presents only one speaker who addresses a silent listener. A dramatic monologue usually occurs at a crucial moment in the speaker‘s life, often a point of conflict. The speaker of a dramatic monologue reveals 143 something important about himself or herself; in many dramatic monologues the speaker tell more about themselves than they may realize. The following poem is one of the example of a dramatic poem written by Frank Horne; To James.

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To James By Frank Horne

Do you remember Of a thousand races How you won In your blood…? That last race…? At your final drive How you flung your body Through the finish line At the start… 5 Did not my shout 25 How you spikes Tell of the Ripped the cinders Triumphant ecstasy In the stretch… Of victory…? How you catapulted Live Through the tape… 10 As I have thought you Do you remember…? To run, Boy— Don‘t you think It‘s a short dash I lurched with you Dig your starting holes Out of those starting holes…? Deep and firm Don‘t you think 15 Lurch out of them 35 My sinews tightened Into the straightaway At those first With all the power Few strides… That is in you And when you flew into the stretch Look straight ahead Was not all my thrill To the finish line 40 145

Think only of the goal To victory… Run straight Run high Run hard Save nothing 45 And finish With an ecstatic burst

That carries you

Hurtling

Through the tape 50

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CHAPTER VII DRAMATIC CONVENTION

HISTORY OF DRAMA Before turning our attention to particular aspects of drama, as well as to particular plays, it seems worthwhile to survey briefly the development of drama as a generic form. That is, when we speak of drama as a genre we must be aware of the different form that genre has adopted over several thousand years- A Roman play is a long way away from a Restoration Comedy in both temperament and form. And just as all dramas are different so they are all the same---for they all try to capture moments of life. That is why William Butler Yeats felt that drama is the epitome of all the arts: as he explained, ―What attracts me to drama is that it is, in the most obvious way, what all the arts are upon a last analysis. A farce and a tragedy are alike in this, that they are a moment of intense life." Let us explore briefly some of the ways in which dramatists have used the form for capturing moments of life.

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THE BEGINNINGS: First and foremost it should be noted that drama commented with religious celebrations; out of the various pagan rites and festivals arose the earliest dramas of an entertaining kind specifically, Greek Tragedy and Greek Comedy. GREEK TRAGEDY arose from the patterns of the Dionysian rites of life and death; that is, from the very start, Greek tragedy addressed itself to serious dimensions of life and human character. The standards of Greek tragedy have long been those described and defined by Aristotle in his famous poetics. Aristotle thought that a tragedy dramatically "imitated‖ an ―action of high importance.‖ Usually there was to be a central character with some particular ―tragic flaw‖ (hamartia). That is, a character led into death, despair, or misery through some sort of error, either in himself or in his action; the most often cited flaw is hubris, which means excessive, self destructive pride. The hero is led into suffering after which he has greater understanding of both himself and the world. The basic idea behind the Greek tragedy is that man learns through suffering. While a defect or flaw leads into suffering, the experience of suffering often leads into new and enlarged awareness of both 148 self and existence. Aristotle further explained that tragedy should have catharsis or purging effect; the audience should be purged of both pity and fear by the time the tragedy comes to an end. By suffering vicariously with the tragic hero, the audience has a greater moral awareness and a keener self-knowledge. This then is Greek tragedy as explained by Aristotle. We still speak of the classical ―unities‖ of time, place, and action which tragedies should have, and we still refer to almost all Aristotle‘s theories. GREEK COMEDY also developed out of early religious celebrations, specifically, from the Dionysian rites of fertility. The earliest Greek comedies not only dealt with fertility but also with phallic ceremonies, and although comedy slowly moved away from this original association, many of the very earliest plays were extremely sexual in both costume and script. Greek comedy is generally divided into three categories: Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy. ln Old Comedy we usually discover a great deal of boisterous comment on affairs of state through political satire, as well as some elements of the extremely bizarre; Old Comedy is best exemplified by plays such as The Frogs and The Birds by the early written by Greek 149 dramatist Aristophanes. Middle Comedy has no surviving examples. New Comedy usually deals with romantic situations and we generally witness potential lovers working from unhappy problematic situations into happy comfortable ones. Then as now, comedies illustrated the traditional "happy ending." The New Comedy is best illustrated in the humorous love plays written by Menander, who was born about forty years after Aristophanes died (that is around 254 B.C.). The New Comedies are basically somewhat more entertaining to most modern day readers, although recent criticism has shed much new light on the earlier plays of Aristophanes. TRAGEDY AND COMEDY CONTRASTED: Because the beginnings of all dramatic history are grounded in the fundamental categories of comedy and tragedy, it is worthwhile to establish the essential differences and similarities existing between them. Tragedy involves events which climax is unhappy disaster, while comedy deals with events which inevitably provide some sort of pleasing or happy resolution. The mood of one is the inversion of the mood of the other. In tragedy the hero is defeated by forces outside his control; in comedy the hero overcomes impediments—and usually in an 150 entertaining, humorous way—and successful. In tragedy man is mastered by fate and nature while in comedy man ludicrously emerges triumphant over opposing forces. Although two kinds of play mentioned previously are different in mood, emotion, atmosphere and also their conflict structure, there are nevertheless certain ―overlappings‖ between the two. Many plays are simply openly referred to as ―tragic-comedies‖ because there is such an obvious blend of humor and sadness, lightness and seriousness, concern of the greatest importance and mere frivolity. In tragedy, the most distinguishing fact of it—conspicuously absent in comedy—is the concept of a hero with some ―flaw‖. Tragic heroes consistently have some flaw—Othello‘s pride, Macbeth‘s ambition, etc. DRAMA IN THE MIDDLE AGES: When Rome declined as an empire the whole business of drama went into hidings for a great length of time. Eventually the dramatic mood was reborn, this time evolving out of the liturgical services of the church. In the late ninth and tenth centuries there were "tropes" or musical presentations of certain church services, particularly the various masses. From these musical presentations came drama as the 151 priests began to speak rather than sing the story. Eventually these "tropes" became independent of the church liturgy and medieval drama was established as a secular entertainment--- although religious subjects were still by far the most popular. Gradually the presentations were moved from the church to the outdoor, particularly into open courtyards. Latin was replaced by the popular vernacular and the audience became more cosmopolitan and representative of larger portions of medieval society. Some of the most popular plays were known as Mystery Plays, which were religious plays based on certain events in Biblical history; for the most part. Critics have, divided the mystery plays into three kinds: 1) Old Testament plays, often treating the fall of man, the loss of paradise, etc; 2) New Testament plays, usually concerned with the birth of Christ; and 3) The Death and Resurrection plays. In other words, the story of the man and the life of Christ became the main subjects of all medieval drama. As the various kinds of plays were produced with increasing independence from the church, trade guilds sprang up and toured around the country producing pageants. Another kind of play became popular: Scriptural events having to do with miracles 152 and saints: These plays became known as Miracle Plays or Saints Plays. Because a play, is only-and can only be-an "imitation" or representation of an action, an attempted facsimile of real life, the audience (or reader) must be willing to accept certain things in the imagination. To use Coleridge's famous phrase, the playgoer must be capable of undergoing a "willing suspension of disbelief." That is, if several years pass between one act and the next while the curtain has been lowered for only ten minutes, the playgoer must meet the playwright halfway and accept the passing of time just as he must accept the ease with which the location of the play may switch in a matter of seconds from Venice to Cyprus (as in-Othello) or from Rome to Alexandria (as in Antony and Cleopatra). The audience must also accept the fact that when one character "whispers" to another, it must be loud enough for everyone in the theater to hear; while it should also be noted that so-called "asides" which the other characters are not supposed to hear are obviously delivered in loud enough voices for them to hear. While these conventions may seem too obvious to need discussion, they should be kept in mind if only to help the student visualize mentally the way the play "works" 153 when performed on stage. Within every play, action and time must be accepted as the playwright urges or else the play may become meaningless; and, at the same time that these general conventions hold true for all drama, the student should slowly familiarize himself with the lesser conventions of particular kinds of plays.

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CHAPTER VIII THE WORLD OF DRAMA

This is perhaps the most essential task of the student to explain and describe the world of- the play. For example let us imagine that we want to write a paper on Macbeth. Our first job is to suggest the entire mad world of the Play, the Halloween-type modulations, the witches dancing around the boiling cauldron, Lady Macbeth wringing her hands. We want to suggest-or even evoke-the entire macabre world in which Shakespeare's characters move in this particular play. To take a more modern example, consider Arthur Milier's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Death of a Salesman. We could begin our definition of the Play in the following manner: this is a dark drama which graphically illustrates the despair of an unsuccessful human being. From beginning to end, Miller takes the audience into a very somber world where humor itself. Somehow only serves to underline the futility of a certain kind of existence. The main character, Willy Loman goes on an interior journey he has no real past or future but instead carries both in his sad yet realistic present. His surroundings blend into those of his past while they flirt with

155 those of his future, and the result is a world of timelessness. As Willy Loman relives his life constantly, he almost ceases in live at all, and his final suicide only magnifies the kind of lifeless world in which he has "lived." His world is filled with death and this is the world of the drama as a whole. There are more hopeful alternative to Willy Loman's tragedy but at the same time there is a macabare inevitability working in the world of the play, an inevitability of death which Miller reinforces and impresses upon the audience at all times. The world of the play is dark and dreary; there is much anxiety and little hope, much labor and little peace, trained human relationships and denuded unattractive human emotions like lust and hate. Miller has presented a world purposefully morose and unsatisfying---and at the same time very meaningful. THE KIND OF PLAY: One has to recognize the importance of "placing" a play in the generic sense. We have seen in the previous chapter that there are a wide variety of kinds of play, ranging from the Miracle Play of the late fifteenth century to the Restoration Comedy. Thus it is important to explain in the beginning of any analysis that the play does belong to the type known as. Then the student may even want to note that the play 156 accordingly makes use of certain conventions common to this kind of play. That is if the play is a heroic drama the critic can notice that the hero is typically a great lover and warrior. And like so many heroes of heroic dramas is torn between love and duty. In other words, the process of defining the play which is how every analysis of every play should start is tremendously aided by reference to the kind of play and the conventions of that kind of play. If we want to speak about a tragic hero---we can briefly remind our readers what the Aristotelian criteria for the tragic hero when then suggest whether or not our particular hero in question fulfills those criteria. We can, in other words, note the expected conventions of the kind of play and the extent to which the playwright make use of them. THE PHYSICAL WORLD OF THE PLAY: it would be futile to enter immediately into a discussion of the play without some brief explanation of the physical world in which it takes place. This means, first of all, explaining the location. Where does the action take place? Do we move from one part of the world to another as in Antony and Cleopatra or do we stay in one home almost the whole time as in Death of a Salesman? If the location has some symbolic or historical significance, this 157 should be explained at the outset. For example, much of Othello takes place in Cyprus while some of it takes place in Venice; the critic would have to explain that Cyprus belonged to the Venetian state and that it was threatened. Then finally conquered by the enemy Turks and made a part of the Turkish empire. Our understanding of the play can never be complete without at least this sort of minimal reference to the location. Furthermore, by physical world of the play, we denote the time of day. What is the length of the play? Are there intervals of time between scenes? Acts? Does the whole play take place in the classically specified twenty-four-hour period? By "placing" the play in time and space we are clarifying the larger world with which the playwright is concerned, the world of action and character. But how futile it is to begin with only what is major without illuminating what is minor. If we did not comment on the location of the play and the passage of time, we would assume too much in our audience. Thus the student should always begin with the essential attributes of the play's physical location in time and space.

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THE CENTRAL THEME: Every play has one dominating idea which we call the theme. This is the ultimate significance of any drama and that dimension of the artist's labor which outlives entertainment value. What we always ask, does the play mean? If we are going to discuss Death of a Salesman to continue with the example used earlier, we need to state that the theme is the futility of rationalization in the face of death. Willy Loman's tragic flaw is pride: the theme is thus in the final sense, how pride leads to destruction and death. Pride is valueless in a certain context. Miller realized that he was taking a domestic, bourgeois character for a tragic hero but also realized that pride had interfered with his whole life; if hero could remember his life and his disappointments, he could not help but be driven to ultimate suicide. The theme of pride leading to destruction determined in a great way the actual final structure of the play. Thus the theme---the basic idea---of the play largely determined the execution of the play .The student thus should state the theme as best he can in the very beginning of his definition of the play.

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Part of our process of defining the play is our early suggestion of the meaning of the play. We address ourselves immediately to what the play is about, for it would be pointless to describe the physical world, the location, time, setting, dominant atmosphere or emotional framework, without at least the suggestion of meaning. However, most of our comments on the meaning of the play should be held back until later in our analysis. The meaning is, ultimately, our major concern, and thus the concern we want to work up to rather than begin with. It is enough to suggest that a play is, say, about death caused by pride: it is not necessary to explore all of the dimensions of the theme and the various implications of the action until the major ‖groundwork‖ has been presented. The major theme, its importance, its centrality, and its execution are thus only presented in a general a way, thereby forming part of our opening set of definitions of the play's world. For every play is located not only in space and in time but in the imagination and intellect as well. For example, if the playwright is urging us toward a particular kind of moral action, we need to define it before we can adequately grasp the significance of the actions of the characters.

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CHARACTERS DEFINED: Part of any first general definition of a drama should refer to the major characters in a literal and informative manner. That is, we should briefly note that the play has a certain number of characters, that only four for example, are ―major― characters while the others are ―minor‖ ones, and then we should present brief descriptions of each of them. For example in our general definition of Othello we would need to note that the play is about the slow development of the jealousy of the Moor Othello. Then we would correctly point out that Othello is one of the two major male characters the other being Iago, and that there are two other characters of somewhat less importance, Cassio and Roderigo. Then we would note that on the distaff side we have only Desdemona to contend with, that she is the new bride of Othello and that her serving woman is Emilia the coarse wife of Iago. In short we would present a quick run down of the characters involved in one way or another in most of the play's action. We could hardly define a play in any real way without at least suggesting some of the character relationships.

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PLOT: We should present a brief synopsis of the major action of the drama in question so that the characters relationships will become clarified by reference to the main events of the play. We need to make some sort of correlation between the action and the theme: how does the action translate into meaning? Why are certain events more important than others? What is the principal event (or action) in the play? Our, definition of the play is more or less completed by our brief discussion of what actually happens in a general way. We need not make a full-scale investigation into the subtleties of structure or the motivations of the various characters. But we need to present a synopsis of the main action. SOURCES: A less significant but nevertheless essential part of any opening definition of a drama is some sort of reference to the source of the drama. That is, we should at least insert parenthetically or in apposition the place where the play story was probably discovered. Obviously this does not hold true when dealing with many modern plays, but most plays of the Elizabethan stage and many of those of the restoration are indebted to the stories told elsewhere by other authors.

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STYLE: A definition should include at least some mention however brief, of the basic style of the play. For example, if we were discussing Shakespeare‘s a Midsummer Night’s Dream we might notice in our definition that a large part of the characterization is accomplished through stylistic changes that Theseus and Hippolyta speak a high-blown regal language while Bottom and his company speak a very ordinary low one, and that even the language of Pyramus and Thisbe in the ―play within the play" is of a humorously absurd ballad mater. When we think of style we must of course try to think quickly of all the various considerations which come under the general category of style, such as diction, the use of figurative language patterns of imagery, rhetorical devices, emphasis, and even logic. lf there is some outstanding characteristic of the style-such as the heavy use of allegory-or irony-,this should be noted in the opening definition. And the student should attempt to make some sort of general statement as to whether the play is written in ornate or plain style, as well as whether the dialogue is mostly in that vernacular or is formal, is rhymed or unrhymed. Only the basic skeleton of the stylistic particularities need to be noted, for the purposes of definition. 163

OUTSTANDING FEATURE OF THE PLAY: if there is some one aspect of the entire play, in either construction, meaning, or style, it should be separately noticed and emphasized-accordingly. ln many plays no one aspect will be so dominant that it needs to be especially noticed; sometime, however, as with O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, there is one outstanding fact about the play, in this case that it runs some six hours when performed or several hours longer than most plays. O'Neill‘s actually experimented with writing several very long plays and this is one of the outstanding facts about those plays Shakespeare's Twelfth Night derives almost all of its energy plot, story, etc from the one outstanding theatrical "device" or "convention" of "mixed- identity." Othello is one of the few plays to depend so thoroughly. on a single "gimmick," Desdemona's handkerchief, which keeps changing hands throughout the play. Milton's Samson Agonistes is the first full Greek tragedy written in English and not to mention this would be a severe example of "conspicuous omission" Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour has at its center a newly propounded psychology of humors and the play would at best be only partly understood aside from this theory. In Bertold Brecht's The Good 164

Woman of Setzuan several characters come center-stage and suddenly interrupt the entire action by singing a song. This is one of the outstanding aspects of this Brecht play and of other Brecht plays; the student needs to refer to the singing and then to Brecht‘s strongly believed theory that when a long is being sung in a play it should stand out and not be incorporated into the main action of the play. Brecht believes in calling a spade a spade (to echo Samuel Johnson) and thus a song is a song and should be presented as such- In other words, whenever there is any aspect of a play which is conspicuous in some sense, it should be highlighted as part of the definition.

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CHAPTER IX DRAMATIC STRUCTURE

Structure refers to the total organization of a literary work, when we delineate the structure we are, in effect, making a summary of the full scheme of plan of the work in essence, analysis of structure is twofold; we begin by outlining the way in which the play is put together, and then suggest reason way the playwright chose a particular way of assembling the events of the play. Finally we evaluate the structure with regard to its apparent effectiveness. CLASSICAL TRAGIC STRUCTURE One of the most dominating theories of structure is that which classically pertained to tragedies, because a tragedy deals with conflict, ancient critics thought of the plays as tying and untying knots. Most of the effort of the play will go into the ―tying‖ aspect, for we usually work up toward a knot (catastrophe) for a considerably longer time than we work down from it. In any case, the view of tragedy has frequently and consistently taken a dividing approach which separates the event of the play into four

166 large categories: (1) rising action,(2) climax (turning point),(3) falling action, and (4) catastrophe. RISING ACTION: Rising action is the entire first part of the play in which the forces creating conflict are delineated, enlarged, and prepared for some disaster. Preceding the rising action there is often what se simply call ―introduction‖ or ―exposition‖, a short section directly in the beginning in which we are made acquainted with certain facts, usually pertaining to event which have occurred before the beginning of the time of the play. We speak generally then of the exciting action, that is, the few events or idea which excite the play into motion. For example. a certain character is stirred up when he hears a report that his close friend or relative has been murdered. When such a character vows revenge we have reached a major turning point in the play, the climax, for the forces engaging the hero have led him into a decision to further action, action out of ordinary, etc. The rising action is generally similar to a building wave which we know will reach a peak and prepare to crash on shore. It usually carries the hero through a series of events which enlarge and intensify his conflict. We often find ourselves wondering how long the hero will be able to endure his oppression before 167 he decides to retaliate in one way or another. The competing forces become more and more antagonistic and we sense that the hero is caught or being crushed between them. CLIMAX: The first major pause in the play occurs when the hero makes a decision or makes some all-important discoveries about either himself or someone else in the play. The act which interrupts everything else that is happening is always referred to as the climax. This is the end of rising action, for it constitutes a major turning point in the play. We are now moving suddenly in a very different direction, often because the hero has some new knowledge or determination. FALLING ACTION: The falling action follows the climax and usually presents the ways in which the hero is slowly overpowered and becomes increasingly helpless. We see him as a representative of man bound up in a fate which he is powerless to master. The falling action does not usually last as long as the rising action. Because there is inevitably such intense emotion in the falling action, the playwright often provides comic relief. CATASTROPHE: The catastrophe is the main action of the play which is often related to death, usually the death of the hero, heroine or (both, as in Othello). The catastrophe is the one 168 event in the play toward which everything else has been working, either directly or indirectly. The catastrophe, though depressing and usually unpleasant satisfies because it fulfills the audience‘s expectations The catastrophe is almost always the logical result of the rising and falling action: the catastrophe is the death which the audience has expected for a long time Sometimes there is a Final pause of suspense in which it appears momentarily that the final death will not arrive, but then the death does arrive and the pause has rendered it both exciting and logical. Often there is a very short detailed section of the play following the catastrophe. The playwright merely pulls together the few loose threads of the story so that the audience understands what will become of the surviving characters The five-part dramatic structure of exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and catastrophe rarely coincides with the five acts of most plays. Often the climax, for example, does not arrive until the fourth act, which the exposition rarely takes up more time than the first scene and almost never occupies us for the entire first act. In any case most plays--and not only tragedies--have the integral part which we have outlined. This

169 can well be seen if we consider some examples, dividing the actions of well-known plays into the conventional categories. CHARACTERS Characters, to begin with, are fictitious creations and thus the dramatist and the novelist may both be judged with regard to their ability in the art of characterization. Since a character has no depth before he walks on the stage, the dramatist must invest him with certain distinguishable attributes in a convincing way. We are prepared to accept the reality of these characters for the duration of the play. As we have noted in the introduction, there is no narration or description in a drama: instead, all characterization must be presented through dialogue; characters speak about each other and characters speaks about themselves- particularly of course about their central emotions, such as love and hate. The combinations of speeches and actions throughout a play, the small asides and jokes, the short angry speeches, the lengthy diatribes, all add up to produce in our minds an understanding of the characters in a drama as people who might really exist.

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CHARACTERS lN ACTION: We learn a great deal about the characters in a play by closely observing their actions. How do they behave in different situations? How do they differ from one another in their behavior when sharing the same situation? How is their actions made logical by what we know of their thoughts and motives? How does the action translate into the theme? There are countless questions which can be asked about the characters in action. By answering as many of them as possible we attempt to analyze the characters in Terms of their action. We ask, primarily, why a character does what he does and conclude that it must be because he is a certain kind of person. It is part of Othello‘s character to slap Desdemona in the face when he has become outraged in his Jealously it is part of Creon‘s character to shout defiantly at his son it is part of Faustus character to mock the pope. In other words, characters usually do things for certain reasons. We do not always discuss their motivation, because they complete acts which are almost totally unmotivated and are therefore to be explained in some other way: namely in terms of what is fundamental about them.

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MOTIVATION: The fact remains that that larger actions which characters complete in the course of a play have identifiable motives behind them and thus we as cities have every right and duty to analyze character motivation. Iago decides to Bring about the downfall of Othelo for a particular reason he is motivated by a love of power as well as by the desire to be revenged for Othelo's promotion of Casio. Hickey urges others in The Iceman Cometh to abandon their pipedreams because he is motivated by a fear than all pipedreams end in futility or death. Willy Loman is motivated by his own failure in his desire for his sons to be successful and so forth. Most plays have central motives and in general these are the giant human emotions which motivate most people in real life; a few of the most common are hope. A major character desires to bring happiness and prosperity to himself or to those whom he loves all of his actions are planned to hasten the advent of prosperity. He does virtually nothing except work toward this end. LOVE: Basically a particular extension of the hope for reward. A character is motivated to certain action because of the love which he has, the love which he wants, or the love which- someone has for him. And we must not exclude, again as an 172 extension of the hope for reward the motive of self-love (amour proper) FEAR OF FAILURE: An inversion of the hope for reward. A character works in a certain fashion because he fears that he will be crushed it he does not. Everything he does is designed to stall or prevent the advent of misery, failure or literal or spiritual poverty. Sometimes such a motive becomes, in effect. the fear that someone else will fail. Furthermore, sometimes the fear of failure becomes the fear of punishment. A character acts in a certain way because he has been threatened with death or torture if he does not do as he has been told. RELIGIOUS FEELINGS: Occasionally, but not frequently we discover a character who is motivated by religious faith. The character acts out of deep feelings and convictions that he is acting as God so directs. His motivation is diminished to the extent that he acts as he thinks he is supposed to act. REVENGE: Although there are certain plays which we speak of as "revenge tragedies" (The Spanish Tragedy being the usual example. Hamlet another), there are many plays in which we find both major and minor characters motivated by the desire to avenge the death of a loved friend or relative. The character 173 usually is willing to lose his own life if necessary as long as he is able to murder someone who has wronged him. GREED: This is a particular kind of motivation in the category of "hope for reward," which becomes an outstanding motive in its own right in many plays; Jonson's Volpone and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice afford. Good examples of dramas, in hich greed operates as a central motive. JEALOUSY: A final corollary kind of motive, in this case connecting to both love and the fear of failure, jealousy operates as one of the most particular and strongest motives in all drama. Shakespeare's Othello is perhaps the most frequently cited example of a play in which the central character is motivated to action by way of his jealousy. Jealousy sometimes simply defined as human envy, other times as over-whelmingly bitter hatred-is operative in most human relationships and thus it is not surprising to find it receiving such vast attention in the plays of most of the world's famous dramatists from Moliere to lbsen, from Shaw to Yeats. THE ROUNDED PERSONALITY: - While we can usually speak of a character's central motive for doing what he does in the course of the play. We can rarely assume that he has one and 174 only one motive. The playwright has the option of course to allow his character to have only one motive, but, in general characters come to us as complex human personalities with many facets. While we may single-out Creon's pride as the events of Antigone unfold, we must not assume that Creon is only motivated by pride. He has the further motive of wanting to be a good king of Thebes, a position which he has only recently assumed. He wants to have a good relationship with his son. Although pride may lie behind each of his other motives, we cannot leave it unclear as mere pride. The ramifications of the central motive can usually be detected in lesser ones. Othello‘s overpowering jealousy connects to his natural, instinctive motivation to excel as a warrior to maintain his honor. To sustain tenderness for his new bride etc. therefore, we should try to arrive at an understanding of characters as complicated human beings with patterns of motivation rather than single motives. It is of course possible that a dramatist intentionally establishes a character‘s actions as arising from- a single, dominant personality trait. Most frequently we discover such a dominant trait in the sinister desires for evil in traditional villains like Shakespeare's lago or Marlowe's Mephistopheles. 175

CARICATURE: In fiction we speak of a "caricature', when a character's outstanding trait becomes so outstanding that it becomes unbelievable. In drama we generally refer to this kind of character as a type. In general we find types among minor characters but almost never among major. There is no reason for fully developing a character that has but a small role within a play, just as it would be disastrous and inartistic not to develop quite extensively a major character. ACTIVE AND PASSIVE CHARACTERS: Some characters in plays do not change: they begin as the same kinds of characters as they are in the end. These passive characters are acted upon by the events of the play they are usually static, or unchanging. Conversely, some characters are active. They perform acts. They have large parts in the play; they usually undergo certain changes as a result, of the action of the play. Instead of being static they are considered dynamic. Most of the heroes of great tragedies are dynamic characters. CHARACTERS DETERMINING PLOT: The essence of a drama, its plot, develops out of the characters themselves. Things should happen in the play because the characters in the play are the way they are. That is the plot with all of its small 176 episodes and incidents. Its complications and simplifications, is motored by the natures of the characters. Things happen because the characters act in accord with their feelings. We must deal with probability in considering the plot we must estimate whether characters act as they should in light of what we know about them. There is a close union then between character and action. Any discussion of plot necessitates discussion of character. NUMBER OF CHARACTERS: Every student interested in analyzing drama must pay some immediate attention to the number of characters in the play; obviously the dramatist cannot include more than he has time enough to develop. In order for major character to be developed, he must be given a certain percentage of the action of the play. Thus in a play which runs for several hours only a limited number of its characters can be developed. There is nothing lamentable about minor characters. They are often types because of the necessity of the dramatist's devoting his time to the development of the major characters. The student should make a list of the characters, count them and group them into major and minor characters, then into men and women. Usually imbalances can be explained. If there are three 177 ladies who may be considered major characters and only one man, the odds are that the ladies are all competing for the attention of the man, and that the man consequently will be viewed in three separate relationships, one with each of the. Women, and therefore emerge as a more fully developed character than any one of them in other words, by making a count of the characters and a quick appraisal of the various balances between major and minor. Male and female, passive and active the student automatically places himself in a better position for understanding the play. THE BASIC CHARACTER ROLES: A side from being lovers, wives, husbands, friends, enemies, etc., characters in dramas has some particular "labels" which are used in analysis. As we have discussed already in the section on Greek tragedy, we often speak of tragic heroes. The tragic hero as defined by Aristotle is a noble man, neither all good nor all bad. Who through some flaw in his character brings death or destruction upon himself or upon someone he loves. The main character in the plot of any drama is known as the protagonist. The tragic hero and the protagonist are the same in a tragedy. For both terms describe the central character. The opponent of the 178 protagonist is known as the antagonist or. In the event that the opposing force is not a person we speak of the antagonistic force. Another important role in drama is that of the friend or confide (feminine, confidante) of the major character Often both the hero and the heroine have a confidant and confidante, respectively, so named because the hero and heroine confide in their friend or serving maid or whoever fills the role. The function of a confidant is to give the hero someone in whom to confide onstage. Thus is allowing the audience to know his true feelings. THE CHARACTERS lN TIME: When a character walks onto the stage. We know almost nothing about him. One of the dramatist's chief concerns, therefore, becomes the presentation in one way or another-of some information about the character's past life. We learn through the early speeches of Desdemona and Othello the nature of their courtship. In other words we must learn action as well as witness action the same principle of revealing the events prior to the opening of the play operates in revealing deaths offstage. Reporters or sentinels always run onto the stage announcing the death of someone (we saw this to be particularly true in Greek tragedy recall Antigone). The 179 characters muse somehow is brought to be images of real human being existing in time. They have a past they are not born in the moment of the play opening. And in the same sense, they have a future when a character dies in a noble, heroic, and at the same time humanly understandable manner. he goes on living in our minds and if the character lives at the End of the play, we should be able to make some sort of logical speculation regarding his future Thus we should always try to determine the extend to which the dramatist has successfully given us the sense of the character in time. And this of course will be accomplished by considering the devices of characterization which the playwright has used. DEVICES OF CHARACTERIZATION: Every dramatist has at his fingertips a relatively. Large galaxy of differing devices of characterization some of these devices follow the appearance of the character: In the prologue or in the stage directions the playwright often describes the character in the physical sense. We learn from these stage directions what the characters looks like and probably how to he dresses when a character walks onto the stage, it is obvious from, his appearance whether he is a meticulous or sloppy person attractive or unattractive, old or 180 young, small or large, etc. In other words, in the mere appearance of character we locate our first understanding of him. Asides and soliloquies: ail of the further characterizations of course established though dialogue. We learn, about the characters as they speak. And, specifically, we are apt to understand the characters best when they speak€ in short asides or in longer soliloquies. On these occasions the character is, in effect, telling the audience of his specific characteristics if he is a villain, he usually explains his evil intentions or at least his malicious hopes; if a lover, he offers us poetic statements of devotion if a hero torn between love and duty, he tells us about his conflict, and his resulting agony. The use of soliloquies and asides is one of the most expert devices of characterization. DIALOGUE BETWEEN CHARACTERS: Not only does the language of the characters speaking alone characterize him, but his language when speaking to other also sheds a great deal of light on his personality. If a man speaks one way to his master and another to his underling we can draw various conclusions. If there is a wide disparity between the kind of language used in soliloquies and the kind of language used when talking to others. 181

We are presented usually with a host of implications. Part of our basic understanding of Iago for example, derives from the disparity between his candor when speaking alone and his deceitful guile when speaking to Othello or to Casio. Hidden narration: while a character in a play is never directly described by the playwright himself, there are nevertheless descriptions of the characters. One of the devices of characterization frequently employed is having one character in a play narrate something about another character. The narration is hidden in the sense that it is not that playwright's direct comment; but if Antigone describes her sister we learn about that sister often just as much as we learn about her through her own speeches and actions of course, sometimes one character's estimation of another is completely wrong the playwright thus establishes in our mind that a certain character is either foolish or wise before allowing that character to describe other characters. If the character doing the describing is a fool and generally not very perceptive, then we simply reverse everything he says about another character in order to arrive at the truth. If a fool thinks someone wise; we generally can assume that the someone is stupid. Thus there is a great interplay between the 182 playwrights‘ characterization of certain people in the play through their own words and actions, and the characterization through the use of hidden narrations made by one character about another. LANGUAGE: It cannot be emphasized too many times that the language of any given character is extremely central to his personality attributes. Not only must we pay close attention to the kind of words which the character uses but also we must be careful to remember how the character speaks. Is he impassioned? Does he speak in a quiet, timorous way? Does he use flowery language or literal statements of fact? Does he speak rapidly or does he speak in long drawn-out sighs? In short the way a character speaks and the expressions he uses should always be our first concern. This aspect of characterization is without doubt the most important and the playwright as well as the critic is well aware of this truth. CHARACTER IN ACTION: As the character become more involved in the action of the play we quiet naturally learn more about them. For once a playwright chooses to have a character act in one way rather than another we immediately understand that character much better motivation usually translates into 183 action in the real world and there is no reason to assume that the same does not hold true in the world of the characters on the stage. We continuality ask ourselves why a certain character behaves in a particular way as we slowly derive the answers to the why we are able to make conclusions regarding the character's motivation. And our understanding of motivation lies at the heart of analysis. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHARACTER: Our central task when analyzing character is to delineate and describe the character's development within the play. It is of the utmost importance to understand the way in which the major characters change or if they do not change, why they do not change in the course of the play. The best way to analyze the development is to proceed logically and chronologically through the events of the play. What is the character like in the beginning of the play? Why does he act in the way he does at major turning points in the play? What is he like at the end of the play, or if he dies, at the time of his death? Our main concern is to analyze his motivation for acting as he does then we concentrate on the devices on the characterization employed by the dramatist to "educate" us with regards to the nature of the characters. 184

THE CHARACTER'S RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER CHARACTERS: Part of the character's development is based on the changing nature of his relationship with other characters. If someone who was an enemy slowly becomes a friend, or vice versa, the characters naturally needs to adjust to the changing relationship. If we trace the development of romance, for example, we are literally forced into an evaluation of each of the partners in that romance at different stages of its development. The character‘s relationship to other characters emerges in both speech between them, speeches about each other, and most evidently in the actions which they share or cause one another to take.

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THE PROPOSAL (a play in one-act) by Anton Chekhov The following one-act play is reprinted from Plays by Anton Tchekoff. Trans. Julius West. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916. It is now in the public domain and may be performed without royalties.

CHARACTERS STEPAN STEPANOVITCH CHUBUKOV, a landowner NATALYA STEPANOVNA, his daughter, twenty- five years old IVAN VASSILEVITCH LOMOV, a neighbour of Chubukov, a large and hearty, but very suspicious landowner SETTING CHUBUKOV's country-house

[A drawing-room in CHUBUKOV'S house.] [LOMOV enters, wearing a dress-jacket and white gloves. CHUBUKOV rises to meet him.] CHUBUKOV: My dear fellow, whom do I see! Ivan Vassilevitch! I am extremely glad! [Squeezes his hand] Now this is a surprise, my darling ... How are you? LOMOV: Thank you. And how may you be getting on? CHUBUKOV: We just get along somehow, my angel, to your prayers, and so on. Sit down, please do. ... Now, you know, you shouldn't forget all about your neighbours, my darling. My dear 186 fellow, why are you so formal in your get-up? Evening dress, gloves, and so on. Can you be going anywhere, my treasure? LOMOV: No, I've come only to see you, honoured Stepan Stepanovitch. CHUBUKOV: Then why are you in evening dress, my precious? As if you're paying a New Year's Eve visit! LOMOV: Well, you see, it's like this. [Takes his arm] I've come to you, honoured Stepan Stepanovitch, to trouble you with a request. Not once or twice have I already had the privilege of applying to you for help, and you have always, so to speak ... I must ask your pardon, I am getting excited. I shall drink some water, honoured Stepan Stepanovitch. [Drinks.] CHUBUKOV: [Aside] He's come to borrow money! Shan't give him any! [Aloud] What is it, my beauty? LOMOV: You see, Honour Stepanitch ... I beg pardon, Stepan Honouritch ... I mean, I'm awfully excited, as you will please notice. ... In short, you alone can help me, though I don't deserve it, of course ... and haven't any right to count on your assistance. ... CHUBUKOV: Oh, don't go round and round it, darling! Spit it out! Well? LOMOV: One moment ... this very minute. The fact is, I've come to ask the hand of your daughter, Natalya Stepanovna, in marriage.

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CHUBUKOV: [Joyfully] By Jove! Ivan Vassilevitch! Say it again--I didn't hear it all! LOMOV: I have the honour to ask ... CHUBUKOV: [Interrupting] My dear fellow ... I'm so glad, and so on. ... Yes, indeed, and all that sort of thing. [Embraces and kisses LOMOV] I've been hoping for it for a long time. It's been my continual desire. [Sheds a tear] And I've always loved you, my angel, as if you were my own son. May God give you both His help and His love and so on, and I did so much hope ... What am I behaving in this idiotic way for? I'm off my balance with joy, absolutely off my balance! Oh, with all my soul ... I'll go and call Natasha, and all that. LOMOV: [Greatly moved] Honoured Stepan Stepanovitch, do you think I may count on her consent? CHUBUKOV: Why, of course, my darling, and ... as if she won't consent! She's in love; egad, she's like a love-sick cat, and so on. ... Shan't be long! [Exit.] LOMOV: It's cold ... I'm trembling all over, just as if I'd got an examination before me. The great thing is, I must have my mind made up. If I give myself time to think, to hesitate, to talk a lot, to look for an ideal, or for real love, then I'll never get married. ... Brr! ... It's cold! Natalya Stepanovna is an excellent housekeeper, not bad-looking, well-educated. ... What more do I want? But I'm getting a noise in my ears from excitement. [Drinks] And it's impossible for me not to marry. ... In the first place, I'm already 35--a critical age, so to speak. In the second place, I ought to lead a quiet and regular life. ... I suffer from

188 palpitations, I'm excitable and always getting awfully upset. ... At this very moment my lips are trembling, and there's a twitch in my right eyebrow. ... But the very worst of all is the way I sleep. I no sooner get into bed and begin to go off when suddenly something in my left side gives a pull, and I can feel it in my shoulder and head. ... I jump up like a lunatic, walk about a bit, and lie down again, but as soon as I begin to get off to sleep there's another pull! And this may happen twenty times. ... [NATALYA STEPANOVNA comes in.] NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Well, there! It's you, and papa said, "Go; there's a merchant come for his goods." How do you do, Ivan Vassilevitch! LOMOV: How do you do, honoured Natalya Stepanovna? NATALYA STEPANOVNA: You must excuse my apron and néligé ... we're shelling peas for drying. Why haven't you been here for such a long time? Sit down. [They seat themselves] Won't you have some lunch? LOMOV: No, thank you, I've had some already. NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Then smoke. ... Here are the matches. ... The weather is splendid now, but yesterday it was so wet that the workmen didn't do anything all day. How much hay have you stacked? Just think, I felt greedy and had a whole field cut, and now I'm not at all pleased about it because I'm afraid my hay may rot. I ought to have waited a bit. But what's this? Why, you're in evening dress! Well, I never! Are you going to a ball, or what?--though I must say you look better. Tell me, why are you got up like that? 189

LOMOV: [Excited] You see, honoured Natalya Stepanovna ... the fact is, I've made up my mind to ask you to hear me out. ... Of course you'll be surprised and perhaps even angry, but a ... [Aside] It's awfully cold! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: What's the matter? [Pause] Well? LOMOV: I shall try to be brief. You must know, honoured Natalya Stepanovna, that I have long, since my childhood, in fact, had the privilege of knowing your family. My late aunt and her husband, from whom, as you know, I inherited my land, always had the greatest respect for your father and your late mother. The Lomovs and the Chubukovs have always had the most friendly, and I might almost say the most affectionate, regard for each other. And, as you know, my land is a near neighbour of yours. You will remember that my Oxen Meadows touch your birchwoods. NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Excuse my interrupting you. You say, "my Oxen Meadows. ..." But are they yours? LOMOV: Yes, mine. NATALYA STEPANOVNA: What are you talking about? Oxen Meadows are ours, not yours! LOMOV: No, mine, honoured Natalya Stepanovna. NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Well, I never knew that before. How do you make that out? LOMOV: How? I'm speaking of those Oxen Meadows which are wedged in between your birchwoods and the Burnt Marsh.

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NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Yes, yes. ... They're ours. LOMOV: No, you're mistaken, honoured Natalya Stepanovna, they're mine. NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Just think, Ivan Vassilevitch! How long have they been yours? LOMOV: How long? As long as I can remember. NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Really, you won't get me to believe that! LOMOV: But you can see from the documents, honoured Natalya Stepanovna. Oxen Meadows, it's true, were once the subject of dispute, but now everybody knows that they are mine. There's nothing to argue about. You see, my aunt's grandmother gave the free use of these Meadows in perpetuity to the peasants of your father's grandfather, in return for which they were to make bricks for her. The peasants belonging to your father's grandfather had the free use of the Meadows for forty years, and had got into the habit of regarding them as their own, when it happened that ... NATALYA STEPANOVNA: No, it isn't at all like that! Both my grandfather and great-grandfather reckoned that their land extended to Burnt Marsh--which means that Oxen Meadows were ours. I don't see what there is to argue about. It's simply silly! LOMOV: I'll show you the documents, Natalya Stepanovna!

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NATALYA STEPANOVNA: No, you're simply joking, or making fun of me. ... What a surprise! We've had the land for nearly three hundred years, and then we're suddenly told that it isn't ours! Ivan Vassilevitch, I can hardly believe my own ears. ... These Meadows aren't worth much to me. They only come to five dessiatins [Note: 13.5 acres], and are worth perhaps 300 roubles [Note: £30.], but I can't stand unfairness. Say what you will, but I can't stand unfairness. LOMOV: Hear me out, I implore you! The peasants of your father's grandfather, as I have already had the honour of explaining to you, used to bake bricks for my aunt's grandmother. Now my aunt's grandmother, wishing to make them a pleasant ... NATALYA STEPANOVNA: I can't make head or tail of all this about aunts and grandfathers and grandmothers! The Meadows are ours, and that's all. LOMOV: Mine NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Ours! You can go on proving it for two days on end, you can go and put on fifteen dress-jackets, but I tell you they're ours, ours, ours! I don't want anything of yours and I don't want to give up anything of mine. So there! LOMOV: Natalya Ivanovna, I don't want the Meadows, but I am acting on principle. If you like, I'll make you a present of them. NATALYA STEPANOVNA: I can make you a present of them myself, because they're mine! Your behaviour, Ivan Vassilevitch, is strange, to say the least! Up to this we have always thought of you as a good neighbour, a friend: last year 192 we lent you our threshing-machine, although on that account we had to put off our own threshing till November, but you behave to us as if we were gipsies. Giving me my own land, indeed! No, really, that's not at all neighbourly! In my opinion, it's even impudent, if you want to know.... LOMOV: Then you make out that I'm a land-grabber? Madam, never in my life have I grabbed anybody else's land, and I shan't allow anybody to accuse me of having done so. ... [Quickly steps to the carafe and drinks more water] Oxen Meadows are mine! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: It's not true, they're ours! LOMOV: Mine! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: It's not true! I'll prove it! I'll send my mowers out to the Meadows this very day! LOMOV: What? NATALYA STEPANOVNA: My mowers will be there this very day! LOMOV: I'll give it to them in the neck! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: You dare! LOMOV: [Clutches at his heart] Oxen Meadows are mine! You understand? Mine! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Please don't shout! You can shout yourself hoarse in your own house, but here I must ask you to restrain yourself!

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LOMOV: If it wasn't, madam, for this awful, excruciating palpitation, if my whole inside wasn't upset, I'd talk to you in a different way! [Yells] Oxen Meadows are mine! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Ours! LOMOV: Mine! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Ours! LOMOV: Mine! [Enter CHUBUKOV.] CHUBUKOV: What's the matter? What are you shouting at? NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Papa, please tell to this gentleman who owns Oxen Meadows, we or he? CHUBUKOV: [To LOMOV] Darling, the Meadows are ours! LOMOV: But, please, Stepan Stepanitch, how can they be yours? Do be a reasonable man! My aunt's grandmother gave the Meadows for the temporary and free use of your grandfather's peasants. The peasants used the land for forty years and got as accustomed to it as if it was their own, when it happened that ... CHUBUKOV: Excuse me, my precious. ... You forget just this, that the peasants didn't pay your grandmother and all that, because the Meadows were in dispute, and so on. And now everybody knows that they're ours. It means that you haven't seen the plan.

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LOMOV: I'll prove to you that they're mine! CHUBUKOV: You won't prove it, my darling. LOMOV: I shall! CHUBUKOV: Dear one, why yell like that? You won't prove anything just by yelling. I don't want anything of yours, and don't intend to give up what I have. Why should I? And you know, my beloved, that if you propose to go on arguing about it, I'd much sooner give up the meadows to the peasants than to you. There! LOMOV: I don't understand! How have you the right to give away somebody else's property? CHUBUKOV: You may take it that I know whether I have the right or not. Because, young man, I'm not used to being spoken to in that tone of voice, and so on: I, young man, am twice your age, and ask you to speak to me without agitating yourself, and all that. LOMOV: No, you just think I'm a fool and want to have me on! You call my land yours, and then you want me to talk to you calmly and politely! Good neighbours don't behave like that, Stepan Stepanitch! You're not a neighbour, you're a grabber! CHUBUKOV: What's that? What did you say? NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Papa, send the mowers out to the Meadows at once! CHUBUKOV: What did you say, sir?

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NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Oxen Meadows are ours, and I shan't give them up, shan't give them up, shan't give them up! LOMOV: We'll see! I'll have the matter taken to court, and then I'll show you! CHUBUKOV: To court? You can take it to court, and all that! You can! I know you; you're just on the look-out for a chance to go to court, and all that. ... You pettifogger! All your people were like that! All of them! LOMOV: Never mind about my people! The Lomovs have all been honourable people, and not one has ever been tried for embezzlement, like your grandfather! CHUBUKOV: You Lomovs have had lunacy in your family, all of you! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: All, all, all! CHUBUKOV: Your grandfather was a drunkard, and your younger aunt, Nastasya Mihailovna, ran away with an architect, and so on. LOMOV: And your mother was hump-backed. [Clutches at his heart] Something pulling in my side. ... My head. ... Help! Water! CHUBUKOV: Your father was a guzzling gambler! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: And there haven't been many backbiters to equal your aunt!

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LOMOV: My left foot has gone to sleep. ... You're an intriguer. ... Oh, my heart! ... And it's an open secret that before the last elections you bri ... I can see stars. ... Where's my hat? NATALYA STEPANOVNA: It's low! It's dishonest! It's mean! CHUBUKOV: And you're just a malicious, double-faced intriguer! Yes! LOMOV: Here's my hat. ... My heart! ... Which way? Where's the door? Oh! ... I think I'm dying. ... My foot's quite numb. ... [Goes to the door.] CHUBUKOV: [Following him] And don't set foot in my house again! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Take it to court! We'll see! [LOMOV staggers out.] CHUBUKOV: Devil take him! [Walks about in excitement.] NATALYA STEPANOVNA: What a rascal! What trust can one have in one's neighbours after that! CHUBUKOV: The villain! The scarecrow! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: The monster! First he takes our land and then he has the impudence to abuse us. CHUBUKOV: And that blind hen, yes, that turnip-ghost has the confounded cheek to make a proposal, and so on! What? A proposal!

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NATALYA STEPANOVNA: What proposal? CHUBUKOV: Why, he came here so as to propose to you. NATALYA STEPANOVNA: To propose? To me? Why didn't you tell me so before? CHUBUKOV: So he dresses up in evening clothes. The stuffed sausage! The wizen-faced frump! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: To propose to me? Ah! [Falls into an easy-chair and wails] Bring him back! Back! Ah! Bring him here. CHUBUKOV: Bring whom here? NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Quick, quick! I'm ill! Fetch him! [Hysterics.] CHUBUKOV: What's that? What's the matter with you? [Clutches at his head] Oh, unhappy man that I am! I'll shoot myself! I'll hang myself! We've done for her! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: I'm dying! Fetch him! CHUBUKOV: Tfoo! At once. Don't yell! [Runs out. A pause. NATALYA STEPANOVNA wails.] NATALYA STEPANOVNA. What have they done to me! Fetch him back! Fetch him! [A pause.] [CHUBUKOV runs in.]

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CHUBUKOV: He's coming, and so on, devil take him! Ouf! Talk to him yourself; I don't want to. ... NATALYA STEPANOVNA: [Wails] Fetch him! CHUBUKOV: [Yells] He's coming, I tell you. Oh, what a burden, Lord, to be the father of a grown-up daughter! I'll cut my throat! I will, indeed! We cursed him, abused him, drove him out, and it's all you ... you! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: No, it was you! CHUBUKOV: I tell you it's not my fault. [LOMOV appears at the door] Now you talk to him yourself [Exit.] [LOMOV enters, exhausted.] LOMOV: My heart's palpitating awfully. ... My foot's gone to sleep. ... There's something keeps pulling in my side. NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Forgive us, Ivan Vassilevitch, we were all a little heated. ... I remember now: Oxen Meadows really are yours. LOMOV: My heart's beating awfully. ... My Meadows. ... My eyebrows are both twitching. ... NATALYA STEPANOVNA: The Meadows are yours, yes, yours. ... Do sit down. ... [They sit] We were wrong. ... LOMOV: I did it on principle. ... My land is worth little to me, but the principle ...

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NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Yes, the principle, just so. ... Now let's talk of something else. LOMOV: The more so as I have evidence. My aunt's grandmother gave the land to your father's grandfather's peasants ... NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Yes, yes, let that pass. ... [Aside] I wish I knew how to get him started. ... [Aloud] Are you going to start shooting soon? LOMOV: I'm thinking of having a go at the blackcock, honoured Natalya Stepanovna, after the harvest. Oh, have you heard? Just think, what a misfortune I've had! My dog Guess, whom you know, has gone lame. NATALYA STEPANOVNA: What a pity! Why? LOMOV: I don't know. ... Must have got twisted, or bitten by some other dog. ... [Sighs] My very best dog, to say nothing of the expense. I gave Mironov 125 roubles for him. NATALYA STEPANOVNA: It was too much, Ivan Vassilevitch. LOMOV: I think it was very cheap. He's a first-rate dog. NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Papa gave 85 roubles for his Squeezer, and Squeezer is heaps better than Guess! LOMOV: Squeezer better than. Guess? What an idea! [Laughs] Squeezer better than Guess!

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NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Of course he's better! Of course, Squeezer is young, he may develop a bit, but on points and pedigree he's better than anything that even Volchanetsky has got. LOMOV. Excuse me, Natalya Stepanovna, but you forget that he is overshot, and an overshot always means the dog is a bad hunter! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Overshot, is he? The first time I hear it! LOMOV: I assure you that his lower jaw is shorter than the upper. NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Have you measured? LOMOV: Yes. He's all right at following, of course, but if you want him to get hold of anything ... NATALYA STEPANOVNA: In the first place, our Squeezer is a thoroughbred animal, the son of Harness and Chisels, while there's no getting at the pedigree of your dog at all. ... He's old and as ugly as a worn-out cab-horse. LOMOV: He is old, but I wouldn't take five Squeezers for him. ... Why, how can you? ... Guess is a dog; as for Squeezer, well, it's too funny to argue. ... Anybody you like has a dog as good as Squeezer ... you may find them under every bush almost. Twenty-five roubles would be a handsome price to pay for him. NATALYA STEPANOVNA: There's some demon of contradiction in you today, Ivan Vassilevitch. First you pretend

201 that the Meadows are yours; now, that Guess is better than Squeezer. I don't like people who don't say what they mean, because you know perfectly well that Squeezer is a hundred times better than your silly Guess. Why do you want to say it isn't? LOMOV: I see, Natalya Stepanovna, that you consider me either blind or a fool. You must realize that Squeezer is overshot! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: It's not true. LOMOV: He is! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: It's not true! LOMOV: Why shout, madam? NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Why talk rot? It's awful! It's time your Guess was shot, and you compare him with Squeezer! LOMOV: Excuse me; I cannot continue this discussion: my heart is palpitating. NATALYA STEPANOVNA: I've noticed that those hunters argue most who know least. LOMOV: Madam, please be silent. ... My heart is going to pieces. ... [Shouts] Shut up! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: I shan't shut up until you acknowledge that Squeezer is a hundred times better than your Guess!

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LOMOV: A hundred times worse! Be hanged to your Squeezer! His head ... eyes ... shoulder ... NATALYA STEPANOVNA: There's no need to hang your silly Guess; he's half-dead already! LOMOV: [Weeps] Shut up! My heart's bursting! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: I shan't shut up. [Enter CHUBUKOV.] CHUBUKOV: What's the matter now? NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Papa, tell us truly, which is the better dog, our Squeezer or his Guess. LOMOV: Stepan Stepanovitch, I implore you to tell me just one thing: is your Squeezer overshot or not? Yes or no? CHUBUKOV: And suppose he is? What does it matter? He's the best dog in the district for all that, and so on. LOMOV: But isn't my Guess better? Really, now? CHUBUKOV: Don't excite yourself, my precious one. ... Allow me. ... Your Guess certainly has his good points. ... He's pure- bred, firm on his feet, has well-sprung ribs, and all that. But, my dear man, if you want to know the truth, that dog has two defects: he's old and he's short in the muzzle. LOMOV: Excuse me, my heart. ... Let's take the facts. ... You will remember that on the Marusinsky hunt my Guess ran neck-

203 and-neck with the Count's dog, while your Squeezer was left a whole verst behind. CHUBUKOV: He got left behind because the Count's whipper- in hit him with his whip. LOMOV: And with good reason. The dogs are running after a fox, when Squeezer goes and starts worrying a sheep! CHUBUKOV: It's not true! ... My dear fellow, I'm very liable to lose my temper, and so, just because of that, let's stop arguing. You started because everybody is always jealous of everybody else's dogs. Yes, we're all like that! You too, sir, aren't blameless! You no sooner notice that some dog is better than your Guess than you begin with this, that ... and the other ... and all that. ... I remember everything! LOMOV: I remember too! CHUBUKOV: [Teasing him] I remember, too. ... What do you remember? LOMOV: My heart ... my foot's gone to sleep. ... I can't ... NATALYA STEPANOVNA: [Teasing] My heart. ... What sort of a hunter are you? You ought to go and lie on the kitchen oven and catch blackbeetles, not go after foxes! My heart! CHUBUKOV: Yes really, what sort of a hunter are you, anyway? You ought to sit at home with your palpitations, and not go tracking animals. You could go hunting, but you only go to argue with people and interfere with their dogs and so on.

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Let's change the subject in case I lose my temper. You're not a hunter at all, anyway! LOMOV: And are you a hunter? You only go hunting to get in with the Count and to intrigue. ... Oh, my heart! ... You're an intriguer! CHUBUKOV: What? I an intriguer? [Shouts] Shut up! LOMOV: Intriguer! CHUBUKOV: Boy! Pup! LOMOV: Old rat! Jesuit! CHUBUKOV: Shut up or I'll shoot you like a partridge! You fool! LOMOV: Everybody knows that--oh my heart!--your late wife used to beat you. ... My feet ... temples ... sparks. ... I fall, I fall! CHUBUKOV: And you're under the slipper of your housekeeper! LOMOV: There, there, there ... my heart's burst! My shoulder's come off. ... Where is my shoulder? I die. [Falls into an armchair] A doctor! [Faints.] CHUBUKOV: Boy! Milksop! Fool! I'm sick! [Drinks water] Sick! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: What sort of a hunter are you? You can't even sit on a horse! [To her father] Papa, what's the

205 matter with him? Papa! Look, papa! [Screams] Ivan Vassilevitch! He's dead! CHUBUKOV: I'm sick! ... I can't breathe! ... Air! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: He's dead. [Pulls LOMOV'S sleeve] Ivan Vassilevitch! Ivan Vassilevitch! What have you done to me? He's dead. [Falls into an armchair] A doctor, a doctor! [Hysterics.] CHUBUKOV: Oh! ... What is it? What's the matter? NATALYA STEPANOVNA: [Wails] He's dead ... dead! CHUBUKOV: Who's dead? [Looks at LOMOV] So he is! My word! Water! A doctor! [Lifts a tumbler to LOMOV'S mouth] Drink this! ... No, he doesn't drink. ... It means he's dead, and all that. ... I'm the most unhappy of men! Why don't I put a bullet into my brain? Why haven't I cut my throat yet? What am I waiting for? Give me a knife! Give me a pistol! [LOMOV moves] He seems to be coming round. ... Drink some water! That's right. ... LOMOV: I see stars ... mist. ... Where am I? CHUBUKOV: Hurry up and get married and--well, to the devil with you! She's willing! [He puts LOMOV'S hand into his daughter's] She's willing and all that. I give you my blessing and so on. Only leave me in peace! LOMOV: [Getting up] Eh? What? To whom? CHUBUKOV: She's willing! Well? Kiss and be damned to you!

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NATALYA STEPANOVNA: [Wails] He's alive. . . Yes, yes, I'm willing. ... CHUBUKOV: Kiss each other! LOMOV: Eh? Kiss whom? [They kiss] Very nice, too. Excuse me, what's it all about? Oh, now I understand ... my heart ... stars ... I'm happy. Natalya Stepanovna. ... [Kisses her hand] My foot's gone to sleep. ... NATALYA STEPANOVNA: I ... I'm happy too. ... CHUBUKOV: What a weight off my shoulders. ... Ouf! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: But ... still you will admit now that Guess is worse than Squeezer. LOMOV: Better! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Worse! CHUBUKOV: Well, that's a way to start your family bliss! Have some champagne! LOMOV: He's better! NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Worse! worse! worse! CHUBUKOV: [Trying to shout her down] Champagne! Champagne! CURTAIN

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CHAPTER X INTERPRETING THE PLAY

When we analyze a play we are not merely concerned with the functioning of its various necessary components such as action, characters, structure, and patterns of imagery. Our ultimate task is always the explanation of what the play means. What significance is attached to the action the characters or the imagery? Quite fortunately there is usually central theme which can be discovered. However the implications, the subtleties, and the nuances of explaining this theme all make up part of our interpretation of the play. One of truly exciting aspects of literary criticism is the diversity of interpretations which can be inferred from a work of art. Moby Dick comes to mind as one of the most talked about literary works and characteristically the pages of criticism far exceed the pages of the novel. When the student is first learning to analyze a play from the point of view of interpreting its meaning, it helps to keep in mind certain basic human relationships which play wrights are apt to explore.

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MAN AND NATURE: Most playwrights explore the relationship between man and the natural world in one way or another obviously some plays do not really touch on this relationship at all. The student should ask of a play' is there any statement being made about man and nature? Often he will be able to conclude that the playwright considers nature a hostile or destructive force. Man is seen unable to cope with an oppressive environment. In Synge's short Irish drama which we examined earlier, Riders to The Sea, there is a strong accusation of the sea. Many people of the same family, as well as many friends in other families. Have all been killed by drowning Synge implies that by living on an island off the coast man places himself in a position where he can be ruined by the sea. The statement is really something along the lines of-how small a thing is man, how finite, how mutable, especially when compared to the permanence of nature, the unchanging and basically unchangeable sea. Lest all of this sound too pessimistic (but remember that there are probably more pessimistic than optimistic playwrights), let us remember that some plays will stress the benevolent or mutually beneficial relationship between man and nature. 209

MAN AND SOCIETY: while it is a given assumption that all playwrights of any significance have something to say about man, the other half of the thematic equation change. Thus many- plays address themselves to the nature of the relationship between man and society. Sometimes this is done in time less, universal terms-stating, for-example, that man always has, presently does and always will hate society because it restricts his freedom of personal action. Other times the theme will be more timely; the playwright will direct our attention to the relationship between man and the particular contemporary society in which the playwright and audience presently live in a play we have considered previously, the eighteenth century play by Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer, there are numerous references to the relationship between man and contemporary society. Goldsmith‘s central attitudes are that his society is presently too absorbed in vanity and affectation, and that the ills of the city are slowly working their way out to the country, particularly as country people acquire the habit of taking trips into town for improving their fashion, hairdo, manners, styles, etc.; Goldsmith is willing to make the opening lines of the play direct our immediate attention to the thematic implications: 210

Mrs Hardcastle I vow, Mr. Hardcastle, you’re very particular. Is there a creature in the whole country, but ourselves, that does not take a trip to town now and then, to rub off the rust a little? There’s the two Miss Hoggs, and our neighbour, Mrs. Grigsby, go to take a month's polishing every winter. Hardcastle. Ay, and bring back vanity and affectation to last them the whole year. I wonder why London cannot keep its own fools at home. In my time the follies of the town crept slowly among us but now they travel faster than a stagecoach.

If we were writing an essay interpreting She Stoops to Conquer we would necessarily need to explain Goldsmith's attitudes toward man and society. The entire plot is designed to accuse, thought lightly, the vanity and social affectations of the age. The fact that Marlow finds Kate Hardcastle a bore when she dresses and behave like a freewheeling barmaid is offered as evidence that vanity and affectation have elevated people too far to be successful, to ―conquer" it is necessary for Kate and other. by implication to ―stoop.‖ Goldsmith supplement the plot by continuous direct statement against the social foibles of "the

211 age" making it explicitly a Play about man and contemporary society. UNIVERSAL THEME OF AN ABSTRACT NATURE: The relationships between man and society and between man and nature can be discuss in fairly concrete terms other themes are more abstract and our interpretations of them are also there fore more abstract it is difficult to discuss death as theme in anything other than abstract terms for example recalling another play we have examined, O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, the theme is, basically; that death itself cometh,that death is unavoidable. Now this is hardy a new idea, but nevertheless it is an abstract one. We cannot avoid our private interpretation of the finality of death and yet we must somehow make a confrontation primarily with O'Neill's ideas on the subject. Throughout the play there are numerous references to the way in way in which the citizens of Harry Hope‘s bar spend their time constructing pipedream all are convinced that tomorrow will be better and nobody seems aware of the inevitable total of those tomorrows death making Harry's last name ―Hope‖ naming another character ―Jimmy Tomorrow" and making constant reference to private pipedreams, O'Neill directs our attention to the irony with 212 which most people approach death We in the audience, but not the characters themselves, realize that they are being led to death, little by little ,drink by drink and unfulfilled pipedream by unfulfilled pipedream. Our interpretation of the play is that it is one dealing with finality of death, yes. but also with the unrealistic ways in which people particularly unsuccessful people prepare (or, in effect, do not prepare) for that death. Death is of course not the only universal theme of an abstract nature we can interpret plays having to do with freedom (a very abstract concept), morality, love, and all of the emotions which connect to these such as hate, revenge, jealously, possessiveness, etc. While we can talk about Shakespeare‘s ideas on love as they are presented in the romantic comedy a Midsummer Night's Dream, we cannot make definite conclusions of a concrete sort. Love is not something in that can be talked about as a single recognizable object; in fact, one of the points of the play, one we would emphasize in interpreting it, is that there are many different kinds of love, all similar in some respects and dissimilar in others.

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FAMILY RELATIONSHIP: There are countless plays that are aimed at the delineation of common human relationship, particularly, those between particular member of particular families. How easy it is to discuss the relationship between Shakespeare‘s Coriolanus and his mother Volumnia, but how difficult to go from there to an interpretation of the play‘s central attitudes toward mother-son relationship in particular our interpretation of a play is strongly based on the action which transpires; what happens in the play is our larges clue to what the play means. And yet when we are interpreting that action we are likely to draw different conclusions from those drawn by someone else interpreting the action. Nevertheless, there are certain universal patterns of family relationships such as the harmfully possessive mother, the jealous brother, etc., and our interpretation of a play can be made more accurate often simply by considering whether or not a particular family relationship is typical or highly different. SPECIAL FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS: There are some themes which only concern themselves with very special family relationships. Incest, for example is an atypical dramatic problem. A play dealing with incest and delineating a theme 214 having to do with that incest is immediately a special kind of play while it may be generically similar to other plays as long as its theme is unconventional It maintains an unalterable difference. If a play chooses to present a story of several people in a family who relate in a peculiar way, that play is making use of a special family relationship, for example Ibsen's famous and long praised play Ghosts is a domestic tragedy and therefore generically similar to other domestic tragedies such as Heywood's late Renaissance play A Woman Killled With Kindness. Heywood's play covers the usual range of domestic tragedy in that there is the, unfaithful wife and the wronged husband. In contrast, lbsen's Ghosts is concerned with a very private kind of unusual family relationship. In order to demonstrate an uncommon theme-that the sins of the father are almost literally inherited by the son-.Ibsen presents the strange fate of Oswald Alving. Because his father had had syphilis, Oswald goes insane. In Ibsen's day this medical heredity was believed in religiously. The entire play is devoted to the ideas of disillusionment to the father's sins only to show their culmination in Oswald's final insanity at the end of the play. Oswald had never known that his father had been an unfaithful 215 husband, much less that he had fathered the Alving's maid. Whom Oswald would- like to have married before, he learned of her. History and yet Oswald is not as disappointed in his father as his mother, the widow Alving, had suspected. Oswald explains that he bad not really known his father very well in this statement of course is embodied all of the irony of, the theme; not only does the son inherit the father's sins, but more often he inherits them from a father whom he hardly knows The special situation of the play is that Oswald had not asked for the life he has been given He begs his mother to kill him because after all it is only fair for her to take away something he never wanted. All in all Ibsen translates the theme into a continuous nightmare. Our interpretation of the play involves. both an explanation of the central theme the son inherits the father's sins and an explanation of the special way (device) by means of which this theme ls made logical and graphic the father‘s unfortunate syphilis which leads to a son's insanity. The play is based on a very special and unusual series of family relationships: Parsor Maaders had once courted the widow Alving whom he now consoles and hears confess Oswald would like to marry his father‘s bastard Mrs. Alving would like to take out her life in the 216 exclusive company of her beloved son There is a special strain in the relationships between the remembers of this particular family which is not easily discoverable in the relationships between member of ordinary families. OTHER PRIVATE THEMES: It is not only in family relationships that we find unusual, private themes demonstrated in particular ways both major themes such as the loss of innocence and minor ones such as in Ghosts are found in different kinds of plays. Ibsen‘s ghosts is a domestic tragedy, but the same theme can be found in early classical tragedy, but the point to remember is that some themes are more common than others; when we find a play which seems to us different in its meaning and intentions other from other plays about love, why is it we should try to locate the reason for that difference in our interpretation of the play. If it is a play about love, why is it different in its implication from other plays about love. If it is a play about the shortness of life, how does it depart from other plays in the same vein. In other words, part of our interpretation must automatically be based upon the degree of conventionality in the play, for if the play explores a conventional theme though

217 in unusual ways it will be easier for us to explain the action and to give a general account of the playwright's intentions. John Gay's immortal eighteenth -century comedy The Beggar's opera is several kinds of play all rolled into one burlesque of Italian opera, satire on comedy of manners, parody of romance, etc. However in its central theme it takes an unusual stance marriage is a nuisance and a bothersome alliance between the sexes: The parents of the new bride are concerned in the very beginning of the play only with the fact that she is married anything else , they feel, would be acceptable to them. Marriage is the main source of unhappiness and the play tries to make this abundantly clear. Macheath the highwayman has gone out of his way to marry quite a few women, at least in principle if not in the eyes of the law. In the end of the pray he is sentenced to what is humorously seen as the traditional "fate worse than death" to stay married to one and only one woman for the rest of his life. While the play is a comedy, and therefore not seriously criticizing marriage as an institution, it is nevertheless built upon the foundation of an unusual theme, that marriage is bad.

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ELEMENTS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Some plays are to be interpreted to a certain extent as autobiographical statements. The play will have a plot which may be independent of the ' autobiography but nevertheless the playwright‘s personal involvement in one or more of the characters will force us to interpret the play in relationship to that playwright's involvement More often than nota play of this kind may be interpreted both independently. of the autobiographical elements and in light of them The important aspect of our task. Nevertheless, is to suggest that two such interpretations are possible.

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REFERENCES

Barnet, Sylvian, Morton Berman and William Burto. Eds.1989. An Introduction to Literature: Fiction, Drama, Poetry. Boston: Scott Foresman and Co.

Gioia, Dana and Gwynn, R.S. 2002. The Longman Masters of Short Stories. New York: Longman

Kearns, George. Ed. 1984. Appreciating Literature. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.

Kenney, William. 1966. How to Analyze Fiction. New York: Monash Press

Reaske, Christopher Russel. 1966. How to Analyze Poetry. New York: Monash Press ______. 1966. How to Analyze Drama. New York: Monash Press

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