A helping hand

The story is taken from/written by…

The action takes place/is laid/is set in…

The main characters are…

The story opens up with the description of/the conversation between…

Then…/as the result of it…/after that…/finally…/in the end…

So/therefore/thus/because of it…

UNIT 2 PLOT AND ITS STRUCTURE

Plot is a chain of fictional events arranged in a meaningful pattern. Each link in this chain helps to build suspense and to solve the problems that the characters face. We can often gain much insight into the meaning of a story by looking at the shape of its plot.

Components of the plot (traditional model of plot development):

· Exposition — usually includes the establishment of the setting, the introduction of the theme and characters;

· Complications — follow the exposition and, as a rule, consist of several events which become tenser (the rising action) as the plot moves toward the moment of decision — the climax;

· Climax — the moment of the highest intensity (the peak of intensity), the crucial event in the story;

· Denouement — the unwinding of the action (the falling action). At this point the fate of the main character is clarified. The conflict is resolved.

Many authors introduce certain deviations from the traditional pattern of plot development, i.e. the author may leave out one or several of the components (e.g. exposition or denouement) or rearrange the components of the plot structure (e.g. a story may open up with the climax).

A fictional plot is usually based on a conflict — a situation or problem which a character tries to resolve. A conflict can be external — a conflict between a character and outside forces (a person against another person, a person against nature, a person against society, etc.) or internal — a conflict within the character him/herself (an individual conflict revealed through the character’s thoughts, feelings, etc.). The largest part of the story will deal with the main character’s struggle to resolve this problem or conflict hence he seeks a solution. Although the typical fictional plot has a beginning, a middle, and an end, authors may vary their patterns of narration.

Patterns of narration:

1) a straight line narrative (chronological sequence);

2) a complex structure (events are not arranged in chronological order and flashbacks are used to bring the past of the characters into the story);

3) a frame structure (there is a story within the story; the two stories contrast or parallel);

4) a circular structure (the closing event of the story returns the reader to the introductory part).

The author often uses certain techniques to creatively unfold the plot:

· Flashback: A move back in time to an earlier incident, a scene from the past inserted in the narration.

· Foreshadowing: A hint or allusion to events which will develop later in the story.

· Retardation: The withholding of information (the author holds some facts back and keeps the reader guessing).

· Trick ending: The end of a short story comes out as a complete surprise.

Read the short-story and answer the questions that follow it .

J. Joyce Eveline

She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odor of dusty cretonne. She was tired. Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clicking along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people’s children. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it — not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play together in that field — the Devines, the Caters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to hunt them out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then, and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up; her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes.

Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home. She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the colored print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he

showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word:— He is in Melbourne now.

She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. Of course she had to work hard both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her

place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.— Miss Hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting?

— Look lively, Miss HiII, please. She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores. But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married — she, Eveline.

People would treat her with respect then.She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father's violence. She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for her, like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl; but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother’s sake. And now she had nobody to protect her.

Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages —seven shillings — and Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn’t going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad of a Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday’s dinner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work —a hard life — but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.

She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home waiting for her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet her outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He took her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the theatre with him. He was

awfully fond of music and sang a little. People knew that they were courting and, when he sang about the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him. He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out

to Canada. He told her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the different services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him. — I know these sailor chaps, he said. One day he had quarrelled with Frank and after that she had to meet her lover secretly.

The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap grew indistinct. One was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ernest had been her favorite but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming old lately, she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire. Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to the Hill of Howth. She remembered her father putting on her mother’s bonnet to make the children laugh. Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window, leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odor of dusty cretonne.

Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing. She knew the air. Strange that it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could. She remembered the last night of her mother's illness; she was again in the close dark room at the other side of the hall and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The organ-player had been ordered to go away and given sixpence. She remembered her father strutting back into the sickroom saying: —Damned Italians! coming over here!

As she mused, the pitiful vision of her mother’s life laid its spell on the very quick of her being — that life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness. She trembled, as she heard again her mother’s voice saying constantly with foolish insistence: — Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun! She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her. She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the passage over and over again. The station was full of soldiers with brown baggages.

Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the quay wall, with illumined portholes. She answered nothing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mournful whistle into the mist. If she went, tomorrow she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. Their passage had been booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer.

A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:— Come! All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron railing.— Come! No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy.— Eveline! Evvy! He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.

1. How would you define the type of the story? What type of conflict is at the basis of the story?

2. Does the plot-structure seem traditional to you? Which pattern does the plot of the story take?

3. Introduce the protagonist of the story: age, background, the situation she finds herself in.

4. Analyze Eveline’s definition of the word home. To what extent does her idea of home differ or contrast with her idea of new home?

5. What is the role of religion and romance in Eveline? Analyze the extent to which both issues represent different ways of responding to the patriarchal structure of families like Eveline’s.6. What factors might have influenced Eveline’s decision to stay home, in your opinion? Does the open ending of the story allow a variety of explanations?

UNIT 3 SETTING

The setting can be defined as the place where the story happens, the time when it happens and the conditions under which the story is told. The setting of a novel or a short story is crucial to the creation of a complete work as it has a definite impact on the character development and plot. The setting is often found in the exposition of the plot and readily establishes time and place. Frequently it plays an important role in

the conflict giving credence to the rising action as a climax or turning point is approached.

Possible elements of the setting:

1. Physical objects (e.g. elements of domestic interiors). Some writers provide a great amount of detail when describing their novels’/short-stories’ settings, and they do so for specific reasons. In Fathers and Sons, Turgenev distinguishes between two kinds of country families by contrasting the elegance and the earthiness of their respective households. The ominousness of Great Expectations by Dickens proceeds as much from the bleak marshes and the Gothic house owned by the character Miss Havisham as from anything the characters say or do.

2. Social and cultural environment. Some writers pay less attention to specific physical objects, but this does not mean they are not concerned with social environment. For instance, in focusing on details such as Mr. Bennet’s income in Pride and Prejudice or Mr. Eliot’s background in Persuasion, Jane Austen creates an atmosphere in which a character’s background and hometown — whether London, the town of Meryton, or somewhere in northern England — becomes central to the story.

3. Geographical location and landscape. Sometimes authors make time and place so essential to the narrative that they become as important as the characters themselves. For example, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne, and Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy are inconceivable without their settings of Stonehenge, colonial New England, and the Yorkshire moors, respectively.

4. Historical period. The novel Jazz by Toni Morrison is set in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. This cultural movement of the 1920s and early 1930s featured innovations in literature, theater, art and music. The setting Morrison creates is integral to the book, whose narrative voice echoes the loose, unpredictable rhythms of the jazz music of the time.

Possible functions of the setting:

1. Setting the story in a particular environment the author creates the necessary atmosphere.

2. Setting the story in a true-to-life environment the author increases the credibility of the characters and events in the story.

3. The setting, e.g. descriptions of nature, may function as means of expressing the emotional state of the character.

4. The setting may also enhance characterization by paralleling the characters’ mood and behavior.

5. The main function of the domestic interior as an element of the setting is individualization of the character, revealing certain features of his or her personality.

6. The setting may serve as contrasting background to the action of the story. Descriptions of peaceful and undisturbed nature may precede stormy violent action in the story, and thus help the author to take the reader by surprise.

7. The setting may function as a main force opposing the character (protagonist), if the story is based on the man-versus-nature conflict.

8. The setting often acquires a symbolic meaning and helps to reveal the central idea(s) of the story.

The setting is usually given in the exposition of the story, but very often the descriptions of the setting may be scattered throughout the whole story.

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