Lecture
We shall call the plot the system of events and actions contained within a work, its chain of events, taken precisely in the sequence in which it is given to us in the work. This last remark is important, since events are often narrated not in chronological order, and the reader may learn of something that happened earlier only later on. If, however, we take only the basic, key episodes of the plot – those absolutely necessary for understanding it – and arrange them in chronological order, we obtain the story – the scheme of the plot, or, as it is sometimes called, the «straightened-out plot».
The plot is the dynamic side of artistic form; it presupposes movement, development, change. At the basis of any movement, as is well known, lies a contradiction, which is the engine of development. The plot, too, has such an engine – this is conflict – an artistically significant contradiction. Conflict is one of those categories that permeate, as it were, the entire structure of a work of art. Conflict exists in a work on different levels. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the writer does not invent conflicts but draws them from primary reality – thus conflict passes from life itself into the sphere of theme, problematics, and pathos. This is conflict on the substantive level (sometimes another term is used to denote it – «collision»). Substantive conflict is embodied, as a rule, in the confrontation of characters and in the movement of the plot (at any rate, this is how it is in epic and dramatic works), although there are also non-plot means of realizing conflict – thus, in Blok's «The Stranger» the conflict between the everyday and the romantic is expressed not through plot but through compositional means – through the juxtaposition of images. But here we are interested in conflict as embodied in the plot. This is already conflict on the level of form, embodying the substantive collision. Thus, in Griboyedov's «Woe from Wit» the substantive conflict between two noble factions – the serf-owning nobility and the Decembrist nobility – is embodied in the conflict of Chatsky with Famusov, Molchalin, Khlyostova, Tugoukhovskaya, Zagoretsky, and others. All this transforms a rather abstract conflict of life, dramatically neutral in itself, into a gripping confrontation between living, concrete people who become agitated, angry, laugh, suffer, and so on. Conflict becomes artistic, aesthetically significant, only on the level of form.
On the formal level several types of conflict should be distinguished. The simplest – is conflict between individual characters and groups of characters. The example examined above, «Woe from Wit», is a good illustration of this type of conflict; a similar conflict is present in Pushkin's «The Miserly Knight» and «The Captain's Daughter», in Shchedrin's «The History of a Town», in Ostrovsky's «A Fervent Heart» and «Easy Money», and in many other works.
A more complex type of conflict is the confrontation between the hero and the established way of life, between the individual and the environment (social, everyday, cultural, and so on). The difference from the first type is that here the hero faces no specific opponent, has no adversary whom he could fight and defeat, thereby resolving the conflict. Thus, in Pushkin's «Eugene Onegin» the main hero enters into no significant conflicts with any character, but the very stable forms of Russian social, everyday, and cultural life stand opposed to the hero's needs, oppress him with their ordinariness, leading to disillusionment, inaction, «spleen», and boredom.
Finally, the third type of conflict is internal, psychological conflict, when the hero is at odds with himself, when he carries within himself certain contradictions and sometimes incompatible impulses. Such conflict is characteristic, for example, of Dostoevsky's «Crime and Punishment» and Tolstoy's «Anna Karenina».
It also happens that in a work we encounter not one but two, or even all three, types of conflict. Thus, in Ostrovsky's play «The Storm» the external conflict between Katerina and Kabanikha is repeatedly intensified and deepened by internal conflict: Katerina cannot live without love and freedom, but in her position both are sin, and awareness of her own sinfulness places the heroine in a truly hopeless situation.
For understanding a specific work of art, it is very important to correctly identify the type of conflict. Above we gave the example of «A Hero of Our Time», in which school literary studies persistently seek a conflict between Pechorin and «the spa society» instead of paying attention to the far more essential and universal psychological conflict in the novel, which consists in the irreconcilable ideas existing in Pechorin's mind: «there is predestination» and «there is no predestination». As a result, the type of problematics is incorrectly formulated, the hero's character is dreadfully trivialized, and of the tales making up the novel almost exclusively «Princess Mary» is studied, so that the hero's character appears to be quite other than it actually is.
From another point of view, two types of conflict can be distinguished.
One type – called local – presupposes the fundamental possibility of resolution through active action; and the heroes usually undertake these actions in the course of the plot. The second type of conflict – called substantial – depicts for us a persistently conflictual existence, in which no real practical actions capable of resolving the conflict are conceivable. This type of conflict can conventionally be called unresolvable at the given period of time. Such, in particular, is the conflict in «Eugene Onegin» examined above, with its confrontation between the individual and the social order, which cannot in principle be resolved or removed by any active actions.
Plot elements. Conflict develops as the plot moves forward. The stages of the development of conflict have come to be called plot elements. These are the exposition, the inciting incident, the rising action, the climax, and the resolution. Particular attention should be paid to the fact that isolating these elements is meaningful only in connection with conflict. The fact is that at school one often encounters a simplified approach to defining the elements of plot, of the type: «the inciting incident is when the action gets going». Let us emphasize that what is decisive for determining the elements of plot is the character of the conflict at each given moment. So, the exposition – is the part of a work, usually the initial one, which precedes the inciting incident. It ordinarily acquaints us with the characters, the circumstances, and the place and time of the action. In the exposition, conflict is still absent. For example, in Chekhov's «The Death of a Government Clerk»: «One fine evening an equally fine usher, Ivan Dmitrich Chervyakov, was sitting in the second row of the stalls, watching "The Bells of Corneville" through opera glasses.» The exposition ends not at the moment when Chervyakov sneezes – there is nothing yet conflictual in that – but when he sees that he has accidentally sprayed the general. This moment will be the inciting incident of the work, that is, the moment when the conflict arises or is discovered. Next comes the rising action, that is, a series of episodes in which the characters try actively to resolve the conflict (Chervyakov goes to apologize to the general), but the conflict nevertheless acquires ever greater sharpness and tension (the general grows more and more furious at Chervyakov's apologies, while Chervyakov feels worse and worse because of this). An important feature of skillful plot construction is to intensify the twists and turns in such a way as not to allow the conflict to be resolved prematurely. Finally, the conflict reaches a point at which the contradictions can no longer exist in their former form and demand immediate resolution – the conflict reaches its maximal development. According to the author's design, this same point usually coincides with the greatest tension of the reader's attention and interest. This is the climax: after the general shouted at him and stamped his feet, «something inside Chervyakov snapped». Following the climax, in close proximity to it (sometimes already in the next sentence or episode), comes the resolution – the moment when the conflict exhausts itself, and the resolution may either resolve the conflict or vividly demonstrate its unresolvability: «Arriving home mechanically, without taking off his uniform coat, he lay down on the sofa and... died».
It should be noted that identifying plot elements in a text is, as a rule, of a formal-technical character and is necessary in order to grasp more precisely the external structure of the story.
In identifying the elements of plot, various difficulties may arise which need to be anticipated; this applies especially to works large in scope. First, a work may contain not one but several plotlines; for each of them, as a rule, there will be its own set of plot elements. Second, a large work as a rule contains not one but several climaxes, after each of which there arises the appearance of a weakening of the conflict and the action subsides slightly, and then again begins an upward movement toward the next climax. In this case, the climax often represents an illusory resolution of the conflict, after which the reader may catch his breath, but immediately new events lead to further development of the plot, and it turns out that the conflict is not exhausted, and so on until the next climax. Finally, one must bear in mind those cases when analysis of the plot elements is either altogether impossible, or, although formally possible, is practically and substantively meaningless. This depends on what type of plot we are dealing with.
.Conflict – is a clash, an opposition, a contradiction between characters, or between characters and circumstances, or within a character, lying at the basis of the action. Regardless of whether the conflict is resolvable or unresolvable, conflict develops, determines the further action, and its development constitutes the plotline of the work. Different plots are built on different conflicts. Completeness in a plot is likewise connected with the development of the conflict and its resolution. If the conflict is exhausted, concluded, then the plot too is marked by completeness and integrity. Plots exist in two types: dynamic (with local conflict) and adynamic (with substantial conflict).
The plot (from French sujet) —the chain of events depicted in a literary work, i.e., the life of the characters in its spatio-temporal changes, in the positions and circumstances that succeed one another. The events recreated by writers form (together with the characters) the basis of the objective world of the work and are thereby an integral «link» in its form. The plot is the organizing principle of most dramatic and epic (narrative) works. It can also be significant in the lyric genre of literature.
Plot elements: The basic ones include the exposition, the inciting incident, the rising action, the twists and turns (peripeteia), the climactic moment, and the resolution. Optional ones include the prologue, the epilogue, the backstory, and the ending.
We shall call the plot the system of events and actions contained within a work, its chain of events, taken precisely in the sequence in which it is given to us in the work. This last remark is important, since events are often narrated not in chronological order, and the reader may learn of something that happened earlier only later on. If, however, we take only the basic, key episodes of the plot – those absolutely necessary for understanding it – and arrange them in chronological order, we obtain the story – the scheme of the plot, or, as it is sometimes called, the «straightened-out plot». Stories in different works can be quite similar to one another, whereas the plot is always uniquely individual.
There exist plots of two types. In the first type, the action develops tensely and as rapidly as possible, the events of the plot constitute the main meaning and interest for the reader, the plot elements are clearly expressed, and the resolution carries an enormous substantive load. This type of plot is found, for example, in Pushkin's «The Tales of Belkin», Turgenev's «On the Eve», Dostoevsky's «The Gambler», and others. Let us call this type of plot dynamic. In the other type of plot – let us call it, in contrast to the first, adynamic – the development of the action is slowed and does not strive toward a resolution, the events of the plot carry no particular interest in themselves, the plot elements are expressed indistinctly or are altogether absent (conflict is here embodied and set in motion not through plot but through other compositional means), the resolution is either entirely absent or purely formal, and in the overall composition of the work there are many non-plot elements (discussed a little below), which often shift the center of gravity of the reader's attention onto themselves. We observe this type of plot, for example, in Gogol's «Dead Souls», in Chekhov's «Peasants» and other works, and so on. There is a fairly simple way of testing which type of plot one is dealing with: works with an adynamic plot can be reread from any point, whereas works with a dynamic plot are characteristically read and reread only from beginning to end. Dynamic plots, as a rule, are built on local conflicts, adynamic ones – on substantial conflicts. This pattern is not a rigid, one-hundred-percent dependency, but in most cases this correspondence between the type of conflict and the type of plot does hold.
The concentric plot – brings one event (one event-situation) to the fore. It is characteristic of small epic forms, dramatic genres, and the literature of antiquity and classicism. (K. Paustovsky's «The Telegram», I. Turgenev's «A Sportsman's Sketches») The chronicle plot – events have no cause-and-effect relations with one another and are correlated with each other only in time (Cervantes' «Don Quixote», Homer's «Odyssey», Byron's «Don Juan»).
Plot and composition. The concept of composition is broader and more universal than the concept of plot. The plot fits into the overall composition of the work, occupying within it one or another, more or less important place depending on the author's intentions. There is also an internal composition of the plot, to the examination of which we now turn.
Depending on the relationship between plot and story in a given work, we speak of different types and devices of plot composition. The simplest case is when the events of the plot are arranged linearly in direct chronological sequence without any changes. Such a composition is also called direct or story-based sequence. A more complex device is one in which we learn of an event that occurred earlier than the others only at the very end of the work – this device is called suppression (withholding). This device is very effective, since it allows the reader to be kept in the dark and in suspense right up to the end, and at the end to be struck by the unexpectedness of the plot twist. Because of these properties, the device of withholding is almost always used in works of the detective genre, though of course not only in them. Another device for disrupting chronology or story sequence is the so-called retrospection, in which, as the plot develops, the author makes digressions into the past, as a rule into the time preceding the inciting incident and the beginning of the given work. Finally, story sequence can be disrupted in such a way that events from different times are given intermixed; the narrative constantly returns from the moment of the ongoing action to various preceding time layers, then turns again to the present, only to return immediately to the past. Such a plot composition is often motivated by the characters' memories. It is called free composition and is used, to one degree or another, fairly often by various writers: thus, we can find elements of free composition in Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. It happens, however, that free composition becomes the main and defining principle of plot construction; in this case we, as a rule, speak of free composition proper.
Non-plot elements. Besides the plot, there also exist in the composition of a work so-called non-plot elements, which are often no less, and sometimes even more, important than the plot itself. If the plot of a work is the dynamic side of its composition, then non-plot elements are the static side; non-plot elements are those that do not advance the action, during which nothing happens, and the characters remain in their previous positions. Three main varieties of non-plot elements are distinguished: description, authorial digressions, and inserted episodes (otherwise called inserted novellas or inserted plots). Description – is the literary depiction of the external world (landscape, portrait, the world of things, and so on) or of a stable way of life, that is, of those events and actions which occur regularly, day after day, and consequently likewise have no bearing on the movement of the plot. Descriptions are the most widespread type of non-plot element; they are present in practically every epic work. Authorial digressions – are more or less extended authorial statements of a philosophical, lyrical, autobiographical, and similar character; these statements do not characterize individual characters or the relationships between them. Authorial digressions are an optional element in the composition of a work, but when they do appear there (Pushkin's «Eugene Onegin», Gogol's «Dead Souls», Bulgakov's «The Master and Margarita», and others), they usually play a most important role and are subject to obligatory analysis. Finally, inserted episodes – are relatively complete fragments of action in which other characters act, the action is transferred to a different time and place, and so on. Sometimes inserted episodes come to play an even greater role in a work than the main plot: for example, in Gogol's «Dead Souls».
In some cases, psychological depiction can also be classed among the non-plot elements, if a hero's state of mind or reflections are not a consequence or cause of plot events and are excluded from the chain of the plot. As a rule, however, internal monologues and other forms of psychological depiction are in one way or another incorporated into the plot, since they determine the hero's further actions and, consequently, the further course of the plot.
In general, non-plot elements often have a weak or purely formal connection with the plot and constitute a separate compositional line.
Reference points of composition. The composition of any literary work is built with the calculation that from beginning to end the reader's tension will not weaken but intensify. In a work small in scope, the composition most often represents a linear development along an ascending line, directed toward the finale, the ending, in which lies the point of the highest tension. In larger works, the composition alternates rises and falls in tension within an overall ascending development. We shall call the points of greatest reader tension the reference points of composition.
The simplest case: the reference points of composition coincide with the elements of plot, above all with the climax and the resolution. We encounter this when a dynamic plot forms not merely the basis of a work's composition but essentially exhausts its distinctiveness. In this case the composition contains practically no non-plot elements and makes minimal use of compositional devices. An excellent example of such a construction is the anecdote-story, of the type of Chekhov's «The Death of a Government Clerk» examined above.
In the case where the plot traces various turns in the external fate of the hero while his character remains relatively or absolutely static, it is useful to look for the reference points in the so-called peripeteia – sharp turns in the hero's fate. Precisely this kind of arrangement of reference points was characteristic, for example, of ancient tragedy, devoid of psychologism, and was later used, and continues to be used, in adventure literature.
Almost always one of the reference points falls on the finale of the work (but not necessarily on the resolution, which may not coincide with the finale!). In small, predominantly lyrical works this is, as already noted, often the only reference point, and everything preceding it merely leads up to it, raising the tension and ensuring its «explosion» in the ending.
In large works of art the ending, too, as a rule contains one of the reference points. It is no accident that many writers spoke of working especially carefully on the last sentence, and Chekhov advised beginning writers that it should sound «musical».
Sometimes – though not as often – one of the reference points of composition is found, on the contrary, at the very beginning of the work, as, for example, in Tolstoy's novel «Resurrection».
The reference points of composition may sometimes be located at the beginning and end (more often) of parts, chapters, acts, and so on. Types of composition. In the most general form, two types of composition can be distinguished – let us conventionally call them simple and complex. In the first case, the function of composition is reduced merely to uniting the parts of a work into a single whole, and this unification is always accomplished in the simplest and most natural way. In the sphere of plot construction this will be a direct chronological sequence of events, in the sphere of narration a single narrative type throughout the entire work, in the sphere of objective details a simple enumeration of them without singling out especially important, key, symbolic details, and so on.
With complex composition, a special artistic meaning is embodied in the very construction of the work, in the order in which its parts and elements are combined. Thus, for example, the successive change of narrators and the disruption of chronological sequence in Lermontov's «A Hero of Our Time» focus attention on the moral-philosophical essence of Pechorin's character and make it possible to «approach» it, gradually unraveling the character.
The simple and complex types of composition are sometimes difficult to identify in a specific work of art, since the differences between them turn out to be, to a certain degree, purely quantitative: we can speak of the greater or lesser complexity of the composition of this or that work. There are, of course, also pure types: thus, the composition of, say, Krylov's fables or Gogol's story «The Carriage» is simple in all respects, while that of Dostoevsky's «The Brothers Karamazov» or Chekhov's «The Lady with the Dog» is complex in all respects. All this makes the question of the type of composition quite complex, but at the same time very important, since the simple and complex types of composition can become the stylistic dominants of a work and thus determine its artistic distinctiveness.
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