Understanding the Text

2 PLOT
At its most basic, every story is an attempt to answer the question What hap-
pened? In some cases, this question is easy to answer. J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord
of the Rings trilogy (1954–­55) is full of battles, chases, and other heart-­stopping
dramatic action; Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) relates Huck
and Jim’s adventures as they travel down the Mississippi River. Yet if we ask what
happens in other works of fiction, our initial answer might well be “Not much.” In
one of the most pivotal scenes in Henry James’s novel The Portrait of a Lady (1881),
for example, a woman enters a room, sees a man sitting down and a woman stand-
ing up, and beats a hasty retreat. Not terribly exciting stuff, it would seem. Yet this
event ends up radically transforming the lives of just about everyone in the novel.
“On very tiny pivots do human lives turn” would thus seem to be one common
message—­or theme—­of fiction.
All fiction, regardless of its subject matter, should make us ask, What will hap-
pen next? and How will all this turn out? And responsive readers of fiction will
often pause to answer those questions, trying to articulate what their expectations
are and how the story has shaped them. But great fiction and responsive readers
are often just as interested in questions about why things happen and about how
the characters’ lives are affected as a result. These how and why questions are
likely to be answered very differently by different readers of the very same fictional
work; as a result, such questions will often generate powerful essays, whereas
mainly factual questions about what happens in the work usually won’t.

PLOT V E R S U S AC T I O N , S EQ U E N CE , A N D S U B PLOT
The term plot is sometimes used to refer to the events recounted in a fictional
work. But in this book we instead use the term action in this way, reserving the
term plot for the way the author sequences and paces the events so as to shape our
response and interpretation.
The difference between action and plot resembles the difference between ancient
chronicles that merely list the events of a king’s reign in chronological order and
more modern histories that make a meaningful sequence out of those events. As the
British novelist and critic E. M. Forster put it, “The king died and then the queen
died” is not a plot, for it has not been “tampered with.” “The queen died after the
king died” describes the same events, but the order in which they are reported has
been changed. The reader of the first sentence focuses on the king first, the reader
of the second on the queen. The second sentence, moreover, subtly encourages us to
speculate about why things happened, not just what happened and when: Did the
queen die because her husband did? If so, was her death the result of her grief? Or
was she murdered by a rival who saw the king’s death as the perfect opportunity to

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 76  CH. 2 | PLOT

get rid of her, too? Though our two sentences describe the same action, each has
quite a different focus, emphasis, effect, and meaning thanks to its sequencing—­
the precise order in which events are related.
Like chronicles, many fictional works do relate events in chronological order,
starting with the earliest and ending with the latest. Folktales, for example, have this
sort of plot. But fiction writers have other choices; events need not be recounted in
the order in which they happened. Quite often, then, a writer will choose to mix
things up, perhaps opening a story with the most recent event and then moving back-
ward to show us all that led up to it. Still other stories begin somewhere in the middle
of the action or, to use the Latin term, in medias res (literally, “in the middle of
things”). In such plots, events that occurred before the story’s opening are sometimes
presented in flashbacks. Conversely, a story might jump forward in time to recount
a later episode or event in a flashforward. Foreshadowing occurs when an author
merely gives subtle clues or hints about what will happen later in the story.
Though we often talk about the plot of a fictional work, however, keep in mind
that some works, especially longer ones, have two or more. A plot that receives
significantly less time and attention than another is called a subplot.

PACE
In life, we sometimes have little choice about how long a par­tic­u­lar event lasts. If
you want a driver’s license, you may have to spend a boring hour or two at the
motor vehicle office. And much as you might prefer to relax and enjoy your lunch,
occasionally you have to scarf it down during your drive to campus.
One of the pleasures of turning experiences into a story, however, is that doing
so gives a writer more power over them. In addition to choosing the order in which
to recount events, the writer can also decide how much time and attention to
devote to each. Pacing, or the duration of par­tic­u­lar episodes—­especially relative
to each other and to the time they would take in real life—­is a vital tool of story-
tellers and another important factor to consider in analyzing plots. In all fiction,
pace as much as sequence determines focus and emphasis, effect and meaning.
And though it can be very helpful to differentiate between “fast-­paced” and “slow-­
paced” fiction, all effective stories contain both faster and slower bits. When an
author slows down to home in on a par­tic­u­lar moment and scene, often intro-
duced by a phrase such as “Later that eve­ning” or “The day before Maggie fell
down,” we call this a discriminated occasion. For example, the first paragraph of
Linda Brewer’s 20/20 quickly and generally refers to events that occur over three
days. Then Brewer suddenly slows down, pinpointing an incident that takes place
on “[t]he third eve­ning out.” That episode or discriminated occasion consumes
four paragraphs of the story, even though the action described in those paragraphs
accounts for only a few minutes of Bill and Ruthie’s time. Next the story devotes
two more paragraphs to an incident that occurs “[t]he next eve­ning.” In the last
paragraph, Brewer speeds up again, telling us about the series of “wonderful
sights” Ruthie sees between Indiana and Spokane, Washington.

CO N F L I C T S
What­ever their sequence and pace, all plots hinge on at least one conflict—­some
sort of struggle—­and its resolution. Conflicts may be external or internal. External
conflicts arise between characters and something or someone outside themselves.

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 Jacob a nd W ilhelm Grimm   The Shroud  77

Adventure stories and action films often present this sort of conflict in its purest
form, keeping us poised on the edge of our seats as James Bond or Jason Bourne
struggles to outwit and outfight an arch­ v illain intent on world domination or
destruction. Yet external conflicts can also be much subtler, pitting an individual
against nature or fate, against a social force such as racism or poverty, or against
another person or group of people with a different way of looking at things (as in
“20/20”). The cartoon below presents an external conflict of the latter type and one
you may well see quite differently than the cartoonist does. How would you articu-
late that conflict?

Internal conflicts occur when a character struggles to reconcile two competing

desires, needs, or duties, or two parts or aspects of himself: His head, for instance,
might tell him to do one thing, his heart another.
Often, a conflict is simultaneously external and internal, as in the following
brief folktale, in which a woman seems to struggle simultaneously with nature,
with mortality, with God, and with her desire to hold on to someone she loves
versus her need to let go.

JACOB AND WILHELM GRIMM

The Shroud

T here was once a mother who had a little boy of seven years old, who was so
handsome and lovable that no one could look at him without liking him, and
she herself worshipped him above everything in the world. Now it so happened

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 7 THEME
At some point, a responsive reader of any story or novel will inevitably ask, Why
does it all matter? What does it all mean? What’s the point? When we ask what a
text means, we are inquiring, at least in part, about its theme—­a general idea or
insight conveyed by the work in its entirety. Theme is certainly not the only way
fiction matters nor the only thing we take away from our experience of reading
it. Nor is theme fiction’s point in the sense of its sole “objective” or “purpose.” Yet
theme is a fictional work’s point in the sense of its “essential meaning” (or mean-
ings). And our experience of any work isn’t complete unless we grapple with the
question of its theme.
On rare occasions, we might not have to grapple hard or look far: A very few
texts, such as fables and certain fairy tales and folktales, explicitly state their
themes. To succeed, however, even these works must ultimately “earn” their themes,
bringing a raw statement to life through their characters, plot, setting, symbols,
and narration. The following fable, by Aesop, succinctly makes its point through a
brief dialogue.

AESOP
The Two Crabs

O ne fine day two crabs came out from their home to take a stroll on the
sand. “Child,” said the mother, “you are walking very ungracefully. You
should accustom yourself to walking straight forward without twisting from
side to side.”
“Pray, mother,” said the young one, “do but set the example yourself, and I
will follow you.”

“EXAMPLE IS THE BEST PRECEPT.”

•  •  •

In most literary works, all the elements work together to imply an unstated theme
that usually requires re-­reading to decipher. Even the most careful and respon-
sive readers will likely disagree about just what the theme is or how best to state it.
And each statement of a given theme will imply a slightly different view of what
matters most and why.

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 430  CH. 7 | THEME

T H E M E (S) : S I N G U L A R O R PLU R A L?
In practice, readers even disagree about the precise meaning of the term theme
itself. One source of disagreement hinges on the question of whether any single
work of fiction can convey more than one theme. On one side of the debate are
those who use the word theme to refer only to the central or main idea of a work. On
the other are those who use the term, as we generally do in this book, to refer to any
idea a work conveys. While the former readers tend to talk about the theme, the lat-
ter instead refer to a theme in order to stress that each theme is only one of many.
Regardless of whether we call all of the ideas expressed in a work themes or instead
refer to some of them as subthemes, the essential points on which all agree are that
a single literary work often expresses multiple ideas and that at least one of those
ideas is likely to be more central or overarching and inclusive than others.
The Two Crabs demonstrates that even the most simple and straightforward
of stories can convey more than one idea. This fable’s stated theme, “Example is
the best precept,” emerges only because the little crab “back talks” to its mother,
implicitly suggesting another theme: that children are sometimes wiser than their
parents or even that we sometimes learn by questioning, rather than blindly fol-
lowing, authority. The fact that crabs naturally “twist from side to side”—­that no
crab can walk straight—­certainly adds irony to the fable, but might it also imply
yet another theme?

B E S PECI F I C: T H E M E A S I D E A V E R S U S TO PI C
O R S U B J EC T
Often, you will see the term theme used very loosely to refer to a topic or subject
captured in a noun phrase—“the wisdom of youth,” “loss of innocence,” “the dan-
gers of perfectionism”—­or even a single noun—“loss,” “youth,” “grief,” or “preju-
dice.” Identifying such topics—­especially those specific enough to require a noun
phrase rather than a single noun—­can be a useful first step on the way to figuring
out a par­tic­u­lar story’s themes and also to grouping stories together for the pur-
pose of comparison.
For now, though, we urge you to consider this merely a first step on the path to
interpreting a story. The truth is, we h ­ aven’t yet said anything very insightful,
revealing, or debatable about the meaning of an individual story until we articu-
late the idea it expresses about a topic such as love, prejudice, or grief. To state a
theme in this much more restricted and helpful sense, you will need at least one
complete sentence. Note, however, that a complete sentence is still not necessarily
a statement of theme. For example, an online student essay begins with the less
than scintillating sentence, “In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Birthmark’ the reader
finds several themes—­guilt, evil, love and alienation.” One reason this sentence is
both unexciting and unhelpful is that—­despite its specific list of topics—­we could
in fact substitute for The Birth-­Mark almost any other story in this book. (Try it
yourself.) Notice how much more interesting things get, however, when we instead
articulate the story’s par­tic­u­lar insight about just one of these very general topics:
“Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Birth-­Mark’ shows us that we too often destroy the
very thing we love by trying to turn the good into the perfect.”

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 THEME  431

D O N ’ T B E TO O S PECI F I C: T H E M E A S GE N E R AL I D E A
Though a theme is specific in the sense that it is a complete idea or statement
rather than a topic, it is nonetheless a general idea rather than one that describes
the characters, plot, or settings unique to one story. Theme is a general insight
illustrated through these elements rather than an insight about any of them. Look
again at the statement above—“Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Birth-­Mark’ shows
us that we too often destroy the very thing we love by trying to turn the good into
the perfect.” Now compare this statement with one such as this: “In Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s ‘The Birth-­Mark,’ the scientist Aylmer kills his wife because he ­can’t
tolerate imperfection.” Though both statements are valid, only the first of them is
truly a statement of theme—­of what the story shows us about love through Aylmer
rather than what the story suggests about Aylmer himself.

THEME VERSUS MOR AL

In some cases, a theme may take the form of a moral—­a rule of conduct or maxim
for living. But most themes are instead general observations and insights about
how humans actually do behave, or about how life, the world, or some par­tic­u­lar
corner of it actually is, rather than moral imperatives about how people should
behave or how life should ideally be. As one contemporary critic puts it, a respon-
sive reader should thus “ask not What does this story teach? but What does this
story reveal?” By the same token, ­we’re usually on safer and more fertile ground if
we phrase a theme as a statement rather than as a command. Hawthorne’s “The
Birth-­Mark,” for example, certainly demonstrates the dangers of arrogantly seek-
ing a perfection that isn’t natural or human. As a result, we might well be tempted
to reduce its theme to a moral such as “Accept imperfection,” “Avoid arrogance,”
or “Don’t mess with Mother Nature.” None of these statements is wholly inappro-
priate to the story. Yet each of them seems to underestimate the story’s complexity
and especially its implicit emphasis on all that humanity gains, as well as loses, in
the search for perfection. As a result, a better statement of the story’s theme might
be “Paradoxically, both our drive for perfection and our inevitable imperfection
make us human.”

•  •  •

As you decipher and discuss the themes of the stories that follow, keep in mind
that to identify a theme is not to “close the case” but rather to begin a more search-
ing investigation of the details that make each story vivid and unique. Theme is an
abstraction from the story; the story and its details do not disappear or lose signifi-
cance once distilled into theme, nor could you reconstruct a story merely from a
statement of its theme. Indeed, theme and story are fused, inseparable. Or, as
Flannery O’Connor puts it, “You tell a story because a statement [alone] would be
inadequate” (see Writing Short Stories in ch. 8). Often difficult to put into words,
themes are nonetheless the essential common ground that helps you care about a
story and relate it to your own life—­even though it seems to be about lives and
experiences very different from your own.

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