Tag: structuralism

Writing about the trope of Fridging and the Withdraw and Return narrative pattern got me thinking about story vs. plot. As E.M. Forster says in his Aspects of the Novel:

[Story] runs like a backbone— or may I say a tape-worm, for its beginning and end are arbitrary. It is immensely old—goes back to neolithic times, perhaps to palzolithic. (p.45)

Speaking of 1001 Nights, Forster says,

We are all like Scheherazade’s husband, in that we want to know what happens next. That is universal and that is why the backbone of a novel has to be a story. (p. 47)

Forster goes on to give his classic definition of story vs. plot:

the basis of a novel is a story, and a story is a narrative of events arranged in time sequence. (A story, by the way, is not the same as a plot. It may form the basis of one, but the plot is an organism of a higher type,…) (p. 51)

A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died,” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time-sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it. Or again: “The queen died, no one knew why, until it was discovered that it was through grief at the death of the king.” This is a plot with a mystery in it, a form capable of high development. It suspends the time-sequence, it moves as far away from the story as its limitations will allow. Consider the death of the queen. If it is in a story we say “and then?” If it is in a plot we ask “why?” That is the fundamental difference between these two aspects of the novel. (p. 130)

Story is that framework upon which the plot is hung (I feel sure others have described it this way) and that narrative framework gets repeated again and again in different plots (like the Withdraw and Return story analyzed by Mary Louise Lord, described in my discussion of Fridging).

Structuralists look for the framework and find the value of tales there, rather than in the plot. So provide a summary from Writing Commons:

Foundational Questions of Structuralist Criticism

• What patterns in the text reveal its similarities to other texts?
• What binary oppositions (e.g., light/dark, good/evil, old/young, masculine/feminine, and natural/artificial, etc.) operate in the text?
• How is each part of the binary valued? Does the binary imply a hierarchy (e.g., is light better than dark, is an old age more valuable than a young age, etc.)?

I do love a good narratological analysis that breaks down a plot into the story elements and finds those repeated, ancient patterns. Yet, it is the distinction between story and plot makes reading both Homer’s Iliad and Shakespeare’s Hamlet worth reading rather than, having read one, thinking there’d be no value in reading the other because it is the same story. The details, the motivations, the why’s, all the little bits of the plot and how they’re put together in the telling matter and bring the story to life.

Indeed, I return to The Iliad again and again and find different plots within the same telling. During the Syrian refugee crisis, which the world reacted to certain photos of individuals, I thought about how Homer recognized that the human mind is numb to large scale tragedy and needed individual, concrete persons to represent what was happening and draw us in on an imaginable and manageable level, with Hector and Andromache as the concrete substitutes for the larger population of suffering. Reading Jonathan Shay‘s Achilles in Vietnam brought me back into sympathy with Achilles and recognize how war trauma and leadership’s betrayal had led to moral injury and the shattering of his character. The framework, the sequence doesn’t change, but the plot provides a place for the reader formulate meaning.

Just one last example of repeated modern stories. I remember years ago I read Sharon Shinn’s Archangel and recognized in it Anne McCaffery’s Dragonflight (the first novel of her Dragonriders of Pern). Each were rather different plots, but the same framework (going beyond mere story, as there is causation/motivation, but still a framework upon which the details of the plot is built), in sum:

1. A colony planet where humans from earth came by spaceship but now that origin has been lost in mysticism.
2.  Through genetic engineering, a leader/protector caste is developed which live up in the mountains away from the rest of the population, who are supported by tithes/tax from the rest of the population, fly on wings (their own or genetically engineered dragons), and practice exogamy (seek mates/new flyers from the human populations).
3. In present day times, the leader of this group has become degenerate and has ceased to believe in the legendary functions of the group.
4. This is parallel by a degeneracy in the land holding populations below, as expressed through greed, violence, and an imbalance in the distribution of wealth.
5. There is a young new leader who will replace the old and believes in the old legends but first he must find a special queen/angelica/mate from among the general populace. a search begins.
6. This young leader also has a loyal sidekick who is his half-brother and whose own love interest defy the taboos of the winged class. 
7. (or perhaps more a side point) The winged ruling caste is allied with the caste which represents repository of knowledge (oracles/bards).
8. The destined queen/mate of the young leader has been violently displaced from her original social standing as a direct result of the degeneracy under the present regime and she has been reduced to slavery.
9. She is very angry and constantly calls curses upon the place where she has been enslaved (or uses her abilities to cause problems for that place so that a curse is rumored to exist).
10. She is found by surprise (her people having all thought to have been destroyed) when the young leader comes to the place for a matter dealing with local succession (marriage/birth of/by good noble woman married into the evil family directly responsible for girl’s enslavement). The future queen helps this noble woman in the succession matter.
11. Although she does not wish to go with the young winged leader to new, enviable status, she nevertheless is semi coerced into it. they have a romance consisting of a battle of wills and heavier mistrust on the woman’s part than the man’s.
12. She begins special training for transition moment, during which she hides special skills from her new mate and the rest of his community
13. The transition between new and old leader centers upon the falling from the sky of destruction in the form of the ancient legend, held to faithfully by the young leader and disbelieved by old leader.
14. In face of world-wide destruction, the world rallies around new leader, catastropy is averted, the older leadership is destroyed and all is put right. There is also the theme of fertility and renewal of generation brought into the plot at this time
15. The couple make peace ❤️.

I was so struck by the parallels that I wrote McCaffery. She graciously wrote me back (!) and shared that she had enjoyed Shinn’s novel . Since then, I’ve come to appreciate more how much stories rise up again and again in new clothing and, as long as they are told well, are still worth reading.