Revisiting E.M. Forster's Story and Plot

Compared to other ways to categorize narrative, Forster's division of Story and Plot seemed to me the least useful.  It did not distinguish between different narrative levels like the other division we examined.  Instead, it seemed rather pretentiously self serving, implying that some read for the Story, while others, more sophisticated, read for the Plot.  But as we have examined the ways in which the audience is an active participant in the creation of narrative worlds, and especially as we have moved into the realm of cognitive narrative theories, I have come to reconsider Forster's division.

Before going further, I should probably restate Forster's definitions.  Story is the sequence of events, the "what happens?"  Plot is the causal relationship between those events, the "why?"  Right away, I think I was turned off by the lack of intuitiveness in this division.  Prior to this course and really thinking about these sorts of things, I considered Plot to be the sequence of events, while Story was those events and their causal relationships.  Then we added Discourse and Fabulas and other clearly not English words, and, well, that simple view went flying out the window.

Now, though, I think more about my and other audience members' own roles in building narrative worlds, and I don't find Forster's division so damn snooty (though I still would like to reverse his word choice).  Stories exist as sequences of events, dormant on the page or disc or whatever medium.  The events are ordered with regard to an external logic, the choices of their author or the accidents of history.  Luke Skywalker's face gets all messed up because Mark Hamill got into a nasty car accident.  But when an audience member engages with the Story, it becomes a Plot, for the audience member seeks to discover or impose an internal logic for the ordering of events.  Luke Skywalker's face gets all messed up because the wampa slapped the Force out of him.

Seen this way, plot is the product of our tendency to over-read, which is essential to our making sense of narratives.

Or maybe it's just that I'm more pretentious now.

Revisiting Cognitive Theory

     When I first saw that we would be applying cognitive theory to narrative studies, I was thrilled. As a Psychology minor in undergrad, cognitive theory fascinated me. However, I was disappointed to see the application of it in our readings. Although Herman, Sternberg, Martinez, Gerrig, and Sunshine introduced very interesting concepts, it almost appeared as if they were all posing the exact same theory, only arguing over the reasons for this theory. They couldn’t seem to agree whether readers identify with narratives because they rely on preconstructed schema, they fit it into their personal constructions of possible selves, or they apply their inherent abilities to read people through actions and visual cues. As interesting as it was, I had trouble wrapping my head around one question: why does it matter?

     I had always adhered to the idea that cognitive studies were not just about how the mind works, but about what that means. For instance, when looking at how narrative is applied to psychological treatment and therapy, we see psychologists applying narrative theory with a constructive purpose. I thus expected to see narrative theorists apply psychology in the same manner. I was, however, disappointed. As fascinating as it was, why did it matter? If we do as Herman suggests and remove the author, the implied author, and the cultural context from the narrative, then why study it? Why does it matter without all of these things?

     In looking back over these texts, I found a ray of hope in the words of Sunshine (literally). She said something that gave me hope for merging cognitive theory with my desire for meaning: “Cognitive literary analysis thus continues beyond the line drawn by cognitive scientists—with the reintroduction of something else, a “noise,” if you will, that is usually carefully controlled for and excised, whenever possible, from laboratory settings” (“Theory of Mind and Experimental Representations of Fictional Consciousness” 284-5).

     Although cognitive theory does primarily attempt to isolate its study to “how” the mind works, Sunshine suggests here that it is not complete until it applies outside factors, or “noise” that furthers the analysis in an attempt to answer the question: Why does it matter? Thus, I suddenly began to see how cognitive theory is applied in multiple contexts, blending cultural, structural, and rhetorical theories with it, and creating analyses that use cognitive theory as a basis. In my own paper, for instance, I’ll be applying Kartunnen and Culler’s rhetorical theories of causality and naturalization, which are both concepts based on cognitive theory. I see now that it is only in knowing how the mind works that the idea of narrative as rhetoric is even plausible, or the application of narrative to cultural theory is possible. Cognitive theory by itself may have confused me, but it clearly supplies the basis for many other narrative theories, and is thus very productive for application.

But why?

In an effort to revisit cognitive theory, I skimmed David Herman’s chapters in Narrative Theory again. First, I tried for a better understanding of why this particular model seems least useful. I am not entirely sure that Herman proves the significance, or the ‘so what?’ of his theory. What is the point of cutting out the implied author and/or reader? Re-reading the cognitive theory sections left me feeling like a toddler. All I kept thinking is ‘but why?!’.

Yeah, yeah, I get that he thinks the whole concept of implied authors and readers is a kind of scholarly hedging. However, I still do not understand what that leaves me with to analyze. He claims that he provides “an approach that openly acknowledges the need to ascribe intentions to narrating agents [that makes] authors or story creators centrally important, while the category of ‘narrator’ will be more or less salient depending on the profile of a given narrational act” (46). But how can you assign intention to a narrating agent that places importance on an author without making up an implied author? And why is this approach sooooo much better, especially since I am never given a model or proof to follow?

Herman’s theory is difficult for me to take another shot at because I am definitely not sure how he does it. Unlike the first two sections in this book, Herman does not actually give me a model of how to apply his theory that I find useful. He gives tons of support for why he thinks his theory is the best, which is all well and good, but I cannot find that out for myself because, along with (or maybe because of) not totally believing it is the best, I have very little idea about how to try it out for myself.

However, I did try. I attempted to apply the cognitive approach to a short story, “Hugo” by Karen Maner, from the anthology The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014. Maner is totally unknown to me, which I thought would make it easier to ignore my instinct toward the implied author. Just looking at the “narrating agent” of the short story left me with very little analysis, some weirdly worded sentences that attached agency to the inanimate text, and a headache. I still don’t like the cognitive approach. Mostly because I still don’t see wwwwwhhhhhyyyy?

Cognitive Theory

When we first started this class, my knowledge of narrative was very limited. In fact, I was one of those individuals who assumed that narrative and story meant the same thing. Of course now, fifteen weeks later, I know better. Out of the many theories we covered this semester, I found most to be useful. Many of them changed my perspectives on fictional narratives. In fact, I would not say that I encountered a theory that was least useful to me. I would, however, like to say that I want to learn more about the cognitive theory of narratology.

Herman was the first one to introduce us to such a theory, and now that it's the end of the semester and I know what I know about narrative theory as a field, I must say his contribution is very important, even though much of his scholarship is difficult to understand at first. In the future, I would most certainly like to look further into his cognitive theory approach because so much of understanding and evaluating a narrative deals with the relationship between the physical author, the text, and the reader herself. 

On cognitive theory, Herman attempts to understand the reader and what she is bringing to the text. The reader, after all, has power in determining the implied author, and she is also responsible with understanding and evaluating the narrator as reliable or unreliable. As much scholarship in narratology thus far has revealed, a physical author wrote the text in a certain way, and because of this, she has control of the reader. However, what the reader understands of the text is largely up to her. Herman writes, "engaging with stories entails mapping discourse cues onto WHEN, WHERE, WHO, HOW, and WHY dimensions of mentally figured worlds; the interplay among these dimensions accounts for the structure as well as the representation functions and overall impact of the worlds in question" (17). Some of these will be obvious because of the plot as some of us may underread, but for those of us who tend to overread a fictional narrative, then these simple questions are addressed on a much deeper level. Herman continues, "narrative world making entails at least two different types of inferences: those bearing on what sort of world is being evoked by the act of telling, and those bearing on why (and with what consequences) the act is being performed at all" (17). The narrator tells a story, but the reader's attachment to that story becomes a very crucial part of the relationship between the physical author, the text, and the reader. The author has control over his text and the narrator, but the author does not have control over what the narrative comes to mean to the reader. 

Time and time again, the scholars of narrative theory find themselves in a circular discussion of all things narrative, and although their points are all valid, creating concepts that applied to all literature across the board becomes very hard. This is the confusing yet intriguing part of narrative. If as Abbott claims narratives reflect the real world, then the story and dialogue are and must be two very different emerging concepts. Cognitive theory is at the root of this, but again, like anything else in narrative theory, the one flaw cognitive theory has it's the inability to introduce a general concept that applies to fictional narratives across the board. 

Narrative Contestion

We have examined many different areas in the field of Narratology, each offering a different perspective in which to study narratives. I definitely would like to explore the idea of narrative contestation. In light of some of our class discussions including courtroom narratives, post-colonialism, and history the study of narrative contestation sounds more intriguing.

Our discussion over courtroom narratives came about after Annette’s critical review detailing a man’s wrong conviction and imprisonment. In the critical review she pointed out facts in the documentary that were never revealed to the jury. These facts if known could have kept an innocent man out of prison. Our discussion of the critical review centered on how lawyers construct courtroom narratives. This interested me greatly and highlights competing narratives on several levels. You have the narratives told by the defense and prosecution, differing narratives of the two defendants, and the narratives of eye-witnesses. All of these competing narratives were used by the jury to make their erroneous decision.  It would be interesting to compare the narratives told in the courtroom all those years ago to the truthful ones told on the documentary. Another discussion that stressed the importance of this area of study is post-colonialism.

In post-colonialism writing there is a clear hegemonic power structure between the colonizer and the colonized. Using this approach allows analysis of narratives that stem from both sides. Highlighting the differences in these competing narratives could emphasize cultural, economic, and ideological issues that are inherently found in this type of writing. This is especially fruitful when the reader may not understand all of the cultural underpinnings that are at play in the text.  Our discussion of the narrative nature of history made me reflect on how narrative contestation can be applied to the study of history.   

In class the phrase ‘the victor writes the history books’ came up to illustrate the aspect of power in ‘who tells the story.’ Who gets to tell the story has a significant impact on the content, how it is told, and who is included.  While talking the class noted several problems in the narrative of our history and how that narrative may shift overtime as we get more perspective on an event. In looking back over I can see the more potential for study in this area. At the time I was too narrowly focused on fictional texts which might have caused me to overlook this area all the ways that this approach could be applied to texts. 

Michael Chabon's Theory of Narrative.

There isn't going to be any hedging here.  Michael Chabon sees himself as a make of worlds.  His second short story collection is A Model World.  His collection of essays on writing is Maps and Legends.

Chabon stitches his worlds together from monomyths and pop culture trivia.  He builds nerd paradises.  Even his most grounded and realistic works, the painfully pubished_MFA_thesis.txt that is Mysteries of Pittsburg and the so much cooler than thou Telegraph Avenue, are peppered with characterful little nods to nerd trivia.  In Mysteries of Pittsburg, the protagonist's father works at the Baxter Building, better known as the home of the Fantastic Four.  The antagonist of Telegraph Avenue, in addition to riding around in a freaking blimp, has a nephew named Feyd, you know, like the guy played by Sting in Lynch's Dune.

And then you get the noir detective novel set in an alternate history Jewish homeland in Alaska or the tale of two sell swords saving tenth century Khazaria from Vikings or the one where the kid from Oregon has to recruit a baseball team to beat Coyote's team of giants and prevent Ragnarok.

Chabon builds these worlds not as escapes, but as crucibles in which to test an idea.  He does this most successfully in his novel about, paradoxically, escapism itself.  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay tells the fictional history of a pair of 1940s Jewish comic book creators in New York City.  In it Chabon chronicles their rise to comic book stardom fueled by the troubles they try to escape from and then their falls, brought about by their reticence to face their troubles head on.

Chabon's themes are clear even if his references are obscure.  The comic character that fuels K&C's success is named the Escapist.  Okay, so his themes are more than clear.  They are right on the nose.

It's that clarity, along with all the nerdy references, that makes me love the works of Michael Chabon.

Also, he wrote "Uptown Funk"

Also, his prose is beautiful.

Diane Setterfield's Narrative Theory

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.”

― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

               Not only does Diane Setterfield exemplify the power of a story well-told in her, but she comments on it throughout her works. Throughout her books, she identifies the elements of a good story, and suggests that each element has a specific purpose, working on the reader to produce specific effects.

              The Thirteenth Tale is a prime example of this technique. In this novel, Setterfield creates a cast of characters that each serve specific narrative purposes (often more than one), and places them in settings that play on Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. In twisting the original narrative to create suspense and question the roles depicted by Bronte, Setterfield appears to ascribe to both the Structural and the Rhetorical theories of narrative.

              Like any good structuralist, Setterfield carefully chooses and plays with her narrative elements, crafting a story in which characterization is carefully determined by action rather than thought, setting plays a key role in the story, and plot is consciously structured to both echo and reject an earlier narrative (Jane Eyre). However, Setterfield takes these elements further through her meta-commentary, revealing that she not only believes that each element of a narrative has a purpose, but that this purpose is to produce a specific cognitive response in the reader. By creating an embedded narrative through Vida Winter's story of her life, Setterfield also calls out her own narrative elements by having the events in the larger narrative closely follow and reflect the events as they unfold within the embedded narrative. 
              Through this meta-narrative technique, Setterfield consciously creates a novel in which all narrative elements are blended to create suspense and subvert expectations. Through this blending, she also carefully places subtle hints about the surprise ending without overtly drawing attention to them, in the end creating a sense that we as readers should have seen it coming. In this, Setterfield simultaneously draws the reader's attention to the rhetorical purpose of her suspenseful, reflective narrative while satisfying the structural need for closure.

Favorite Author and Theory of Narrative

For as long as I can remember, I've always been an avid reader. I simply love the beauty words on a page create. More importantly, I appreciate the power of language to communicate a purpose between text and reader. With that said, I've enjoyed most fictional and nonfictional narratives that I've read, but my favorite author is Khaled Hosseini. Hosseini does a remarkable job of telling cross-cultural stories of the Eastern and Western worlds. This is one of the best traits of Hosseini's works. Thus far, Hosseini has written three novels: The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and his latest And The Mountains Echoed. 

As a result, the more I learned about narrative theory, the more I wanted to apply these theories to my favorite work. In particular, I sought to effectively apply Wayne Booth's theories to the works of my favorite author. Booth's concepts of the unreliable narrator, reliable narrator, and implied author are what I focused on the most. While learning about these theories, I noticed that all three of Hosseini's texts follow a certain pattern. All three of his novels are written as a series of flashbacks and flash forwards because all three novels have a purpose. In this matter, Hosseini links the past and the present, giving and connecting the events of both simultaneously. Additionally, the master plots appear to be similar in that all three text center on loss -- loss of a country that is and typical human behaviors of love, guilt, heartbreak, etc. 

Hosseini's flashback and flash forward patterns lead me to believe that his purpose first of all is to tell a wonderful story. However, while telling a wonderful story, I think Hosseini wants his Western readers to realize that there really is not that much of a difference between the Eastern and Western worlds. We are all human, and the journeys we experience affect us long term regardless of which world we are from. Most important of all, Hosseini's texts (all three) seem to indicate that humans have the capability to overcome many hardships, and as such, his text certainly fit Abbott's stance that narratives reflect the real world. Hosseini texts tell of Afghanistan in a fictional way, but what these texts portray is human behavior, and despite what happens or where we are from, all humans behave in similar ways. With this, I think Hosseini establishes a strong link between the Western and Eastern worlds which for so long have wanted to be different, yet both worlds are far more similar than different. In short, Hosseini's personal theory on narrative centers on connecting all people. 

In my first post, I presented Chris Kyle’s story as a sort of case study in the complex ethical issues inherent in Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm, but I made an error because in presenting such a brief thumbnail view of Kyle’s story, I reduced its own complicated issues to a simple binary.  In many ways, I failed to live up to the ethical standards I was holding forth.  What a surprise, right? But in my defense, Kyle’s story had become politicized, and in our country, when something gets politicized, it also gets polarized.  That, however, must be combatted.  We owe it ourselves and to Kyle to address the full complexity of his story, so let me make my own small attempt to rectify my previous error.

First of all, I should not have so quickly set aside questions about the accuracy of Kyle’s accounts regarding his actions.  It is clear that Kyle fabricated portions of his memoir, but we should not necessarily use that fact to discount the totality of what he wrote.  I hold that everyone fabricates stories about themselves sometimes, but few of us write memoirs that get legally challenged by former governors/Predator victims.  We don’t have to give Kyle a pass for fabricating stories, but instead of using that to discount everything he wrote, we should consider that paratextual information when interpreting the purpose and meaning of his memoir. 

Second, I should not have provided a false dichotomy: praise Kyle for his bravery and dedication or damn Kyle for his violence and perhaps jingoistic worldview.  We should do neither and both.  We should interrogate individual actions and positions but resist the easy temptation of placing Kyle, or our memory of him, into a box neatly labeled “good” or “bad.”  Essentializing Kyle in that way fails him and our broader community.  It cuts off further interrogation and discussion and leads us all into hypocritical positions where we discount or ignore qualities we would otherwise damn or praise.

For better or worse, Chris Kyle has become a character in our national narrative.  We should resist the temptation to make him a flat character and our narrative a Manichean one.

Bodily functions in Narrative

In Brewer’s “A Loosening of Tongues: From Narrative Economy to Women Writing,” bodies act as the basis for language and narrative motivation, each narrative function both responding to and making claims about gendered bodies. To AnnieLeClerc, bodies as we know them are cultural constructs, with ideas, meanings, values, and concerns attached to them. If bodies are cultural constructs, and the ideas behind them are cultural constructs within the narrative, this supports Jerome Bruner’s assertion that narrative is a cultural construct.

Bodies, then, are simply elements of the narrative that serve specific functions. Each person has their own meanings and ideas attached to bodies, and thus the functions that bodies serve within the narrative fulfills different purposes, according to the reader’s horizon of expectations. As readers identify with the bodily functions of the narrative, they read through a cultural lens, thus identifying with them and perceiving them in different ways.

As James Phelan suggests that narrative involves relationships between the agency of the author, the text, and the reader, thus bodies within the narrative can serve multiple functions determined by authorial intent, discourse, and reader through a recursive process of meaning-making. Due to this rhetorical function of narrative, and the subjectivity of bodily functions within narrative, the use of these functions can often lead to reinforcement of stereotypes, such as in Lynne Huffer’s example of Sodom and Gomorrah, reiterating the age-old chastisement of certain types of bodies. Alternatively, through critical reading and narrative awareness, readers can challenge and complicate these functions, such as Gita Rajan’s rereading of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” readjusting one’s horizon of expectations in order to accommodate new bodily functions within narratives.

Bodies in Narrative

Addressing bodies in narrative is yet another crucial component of narrative theory. Prior to taking this course, hearing the word body or bodies in terms of narrative, to me, meant female bodies. In part, I blame the culture I live in and the culture I was taught in for this long term assumption of mine. Nevertheless, I would like to elaborate on this assumption.

Throughout literature, women have been harshly criticized for wanting a form of power, yet if the men desire power, then that's seen as a plus and is almost expected of the male role in our Western culture. A perfect example of male vs. female dominance for power is F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. When this narrative is truly examined, both Daisy and Gatsby are power hungry, but while Gatsby is seen as this macho criminal who is admired for his risque life style and place in society, Daisy is labeled as a shallow, materialistic adulteress when really she is simply a woman attempting to earn her place in a man's world. Since the narrative is told by Nick, we see a male constructed image of a female. For instance, Nick admires Daisy for her beauty and her physical, womanly ways. Past that, we really do not know much about Daisy. She is simply Gatsby's downfall and is pretty. This is one of the classic stereotypes of the Western world in terms of gender.  Daisy's beauty and Gatsby's admiration of her beauty drive the narrative further showing women via appearance only. Another gender issue in the text is that Gatsby has to protect Daisy, and so Fitzgerald's classic becomes nothing more than a master plot for something we have seen throughout Western literature -- a master plot for the stereotypical female role presented through a male perspective with characteristics that remain even in narratives written today.

The Great Gatsby is considered to be an American classic that truly reflects our culture. Gender, as we know, is culture created, and in the 1920s (the setting of Gatsby), women were simply seen as pretty, beautiful, and delicate. However, sadly, as a culture, we continue to follow this cycle. Yes, improvements have been made, but if a woman is not labeled beautiful or pretty and does not fit the typical Daisy role, then there is something abnormal about her. Our narratives today do not focus on the abnormal or the unique ways of females today as they should, and this lack of focus leads individuals like me to associate bodies in narrative simply as female because that's all that's being portrayed to the masses. That's what our culture is, and if I am going to agree with Abbott's claim and accept that narratives reflect our world, our culture then making such an argument is valid. 

How do bodies function in narrative?

'Bodies,' defined by the OED as "the complete physical form of a person or animal; the assemblage of parts, organs, and tissues that constitutes a whole organism," function to further the narrative in some way. My way of thinking about bodies in a narrative was to equate them with characters, so bodies "perform various functions in the progression" of a narrative (Phelan and Rabinowitz 111). The bodies in a narrative, instead of being made up of organs or tissues, are made up of "marks on a page … the alphabetical characters that spell out 'who' they are" (Warhol 119).

They can function within the narrative to advance the overall message or thesis of the narrative. As Warhol acknowledges, "the familiar configuration of characters … [can also be] a framework on which to build a plot" (120). How an author makes use of a familiar stable of certain kinds of characters can either conform to the readers' expectations or stick to a known master plot, or the author can attempt to subvert readers expectations by placing these familiar characters in unfamiliar situations (see Lizzie Bennett, zombie killer).

However, it seems to me that bodies can also function outside the narrative, by working on the reader in a different way. In accidentally re-reading Lanser's "Sexing the Narrative" this week, I happened upon a quote that brought to mind this week's prompt. Lanser discusses the fact that the way a body in a narrative acts can act in conflict with a reader's established world view: "in a culture where a cat's sitting on a mat were considered transgressive behavior, the first version might be more conflict-intense than the second, and in a culture that did not set up cats and dogs as potential enemies the second might not suggest conflict at all" (91). Lanser's focuses her discussion on gender and sexuality, but this argument could be applied to almost all uses of bodies in a text. Whenever a body is put in a situation and given a decision to make, there will probably be someone who disagrees with that decision, even if the author does not frame it as a decision.

So, it seems that bodies, when they function well, in a narrative further the overall intended message of the narrative, but they can also function outside the narrative by inspiring strong feelings in readers. Lanser discusses it as conflict, but Warhol's discussion of Austen in Narrative Theory shows that bodies in a narrative can inspire such strength of feeling that readers begin to think of them as real people, which is a mistake because, for the most part, bodies are purely signifiers used as a tool.

The bodies in narrative function as surrogates for real bodies.  They are, thankfully, not real bodies.  They are constructs of words and symbols, performances and effects.  The abuses heaped upon them are not real abuses.  That blood is catsup and the wound it flows from a squib.  The pleasures they enjoy are not real pleasures.  That’s not pot.  It’s just potpourri. 

            As Dr. Busl warned, one of the side-effects of studying narrative theory is coming to realize this, and it can be a bit heartbreaking.  I really like Luke Skywalker as a person, but he’s no person.  On the other hand, it can also be a bit relieving.  I don’t have to worry about whether or not Luke died, for he never lived. 

            And how they make us feel is the really important part of the way bodies function in literature.  Because they are not real bodies, they don’t experience real pain or pleasure, so we are under different ethical constraints when we inflict pain or pleasure on them.  We can cut Luke’s hand off because he doesn’t feel it (and it will be conveniently replaced by a robot hand in a few scenes anyway).

            Instead of being concerned about the effects of our actions on the narrative bodies, we must be concerned with the effects of our actions on our audience.  This is important.  It is what stops us from just cutting Luke to little pieces.  Imagine what a kid would think seeing that, seeing his hero and surrogate’s dad just disembowel him all Game of Thrones style because he didn’t want to join a coup.  That kid would be so messed up.  At the very least, Empire would stop being his favorite movie of all time ever.

            So when we cause pain or pleasure to a narrative body, we must consider the effects that will have on the persons in our audience.  Ultimately, bodies in narrative function as rhetorical devices to elicit emotional and cognitive reactions from the audience.