English 320:  The Short Story

Feedback on Option 2 of the Out-of-Class Essay for Spring 2002 Mid-Term Exam

The task in Option 2 was the following: 

In their parting shot on the subject of character and characterization, our editors are at pains to get novice readers to consider that, in short stories, character may be more fundamental than plot.  "The action of a story," they point out, "usually grows out of the personality of its protagonist and the situation he or she faces."  As critic Phyllis Bottome observed, 'If a writer is true to his characters they will give him his plot.'"  Demonstrate some of the important ways in which the character of the protagonist creates action, in the story you choose to focus on, and explain how what this causes us to notice is important to the story's overall reason for being.

The stories eligible to be chosen among for carrying out this task with were:

The first thing we have to do in approaching such a task is to analyze the task into its logical elements and get clear about how these elements logically relate to each other.  Unless we do the first, we have no way of knowing whether we have completed the task.  Unless we do the second, we have no way to devise a coherent strategy for organizing the various parts of our essay.  (Before reading further, reflect on the last three sentences to see how the second and third must be true.)

The logical elements of the assigned task

What then are the logical elements of the task imposed in this assignment?  On the face of things, there are two:  (A) we have to demonstrate some of the important ways in which the character of the protagonist determines the plot, and then (B) we have to come up with some explanation of how what appreciating this causes us to notice is important to the story's overall reason for being.  When we reflect on these two tasks, though, we notice that each of them in turn entails a number of subtasks.

(A) In order to show how the character of the protagonist creates the story's plot, we are going to have to do three things.  

(1) We're going to have to get a clear idea of what exactly the plot of the story is.

To do this, we need to figure out what the key episodes are that constitute the plot, and get clear on exactly what their role is in the plot as a whole.  We also need to decide what is the contribution of the protagonist to each of these.  (Notice that I just  set forth 3 logically distinct subtasks.)  For example:

What are the key facts constituting the exposition (in the plot sense of this term)?

What are we to understand to be the contributions, if any, of the protagonist to these?

What are the key events that play a role in the rising action of the plot?

For each of these, we have to ask what action or actions, on the part of the protagonist, contributes to it.

What action on the  part of the protagonist constitutes the story's climax?

What are the key actions of the protagonist in the story's dénouement?

What resources could you consult to refresh your clarity about each of these notions about plot elements?  Well, in addition to the link above on "exposition," you'd obviously want to re-study our editors' discussion of "Plot" on pp. 11-12 of our text.

(2) We're going to have to commit ourselves to an insightful picture of what the character of the protagonist is.  (Of course, before we can do this, we're going to have to arrive at such a picture for ourselves.)

How do we do this?  It will probably be a good idea to review the resources you've already been made acquainted with that provide you with pointers on this.  Chiefly these are:

  1. Our editor's introduction to their chapter on "Character and Characterization."
  2. The kinds of questions they formulate at the end of each story they have selected for inclusion in this chapter.
  3. Various articles in our online glossary of critical concepts, e.g.,
    • Character and Characterization
    • Flat vs. Round Characterization   (Since we're dealing here with a protagonist of short story, we would begin with the presumption that we have to do with a personality complex enough to qualify as "round."  This is a rebuttable presumption -- i.e., we should be open to the idea that we might have to conclude our protagonist is is a flat character.  But we should start with the idea that if our first impression is that the protagonist only has a single or a couple of leading traits, and no internal conflict, we've probably missed something.)
    • Static vs. Dynamic Characterization  In connection with this distinction, we would want to be alert as to whether this is a story that turns upon an epiphany and, if so, whether this is shared by the protagonist or confined to the reader.  We'd also want to notice whether or not we have to do here with an initiation story.

It's clear that at the heart of our understanding of the protagonist's character, will be our understanding of the complex of motives at work behind his or her key actions (in the plot).  

(Here we want to be aware of the possibility that the protagonist might or might not be more or less consciously aware of his or her motivations.  If a person is unaware of what is prompting him to behave in a certain way, we want not only to take these motives themselves into our conception of what makes him tick, but also what we figure are the motives behind the repression that keeps them out of the person's conscious picture of himself.)

It may be that, for certain actions, we will have to give up one or both of these assumptions.  But we will make a big mistake if we don't start with it.

Ultimately, that is, it is when we ask what stable dispositions presumably lie behind a person's readiness to be prompted by certain motives under certain sorts of circumstances that we arrive at a conception of that person's standing assumptions and values.

And it is on the basis of these standing assumptions and values, in turn, that we arrive at a sense of a person's "traits of character."

One we have a list of character traits exhibited by the protagonist, we still have some work to do if we are to "form a conception of" the protagonist's character.  For a conception of someone's character is something more than a list of traits:  it is a picture of how these relate to each other in terms of some overall pattern.  Are some "more fundamental" than others?  (Conversely:  are some to be appreciated as "more specific expressions" of others?)  Are some subsystems of such traits inconsistent with others, so that the personality is confronted with some sort of persistent internal conflict?  (Is there more than one conflict at work?)

(3) We're going to have to relate our picture of the protagonist's characterization to the the description we give of the story's plot.

If we've done the job on items (2) and (1) above, we'll be in a good position to do this.  In fact, in one sense, we've already done it:  we will have generated for ourselves the key insights we need.  But in another sense, we still have some work to do, because we still have to figure out how to organize our presentation of the reasoning we went through in what for our reader will be a rationally order fashion.

Should we start with a summary of the plot, and then figure out a way to show how this stems from the protagonist's character (as we've come to understand it)?

Or should we begin with a summary of what we've arrived at concerning the protagonist's character and then show how it shapes the story's plot? 

(B) Once we noticed how in particular, in the story we've chosen, the protagonist's character determines the story's plot, the assignment requires us to have something to say on a subsequent question -- a  question of the form "so what?"  We have to come up with some explanation of how noticing what we have helps lead us to notice something important about the story's overall reason for being.  If we look at this task, we see that it, too, breaks down into a couple of subtasks.

(1) We have to formulate some description of the overall theme of the story, or at least a picture of some important dimension of its overall theme.

To do this, of course, we have to understand what sort of thing we are referring to by the term "theme."  

We'd want to have a sense of how "theme," in a short story, is like the "moral," in a fable or tale, in that can be described as the "point" or "overall reason for being" of the story.  Both involve generalizations from the particular situation depicted in the fictional situation to other potential situations that qualify as "different instances of the same type of case."

We'd want to have a sense of how "theme" (in a short story) and "moral" (in a fable or tale) are nevertheless importantly distinct sorts of thing, in that "theme" tends to be considerably more complex and nuanced than "moral".  One way to put this might be to say that a story's "theme" embraces interwoven set of particular issues that it seems designed to invite the reader to reflect on, together with some perspective from which these issues might be regarded as important.  The "type of case" that a short story will instantiate is typically more specific than the type of case covered by the moral of a fable or tale.  

For instance, the moral of the little tale "Independence" might be that it is the mark of a philosophic temperament to prefer a life of contemplation ("fishing in nature") to a life of political action.  Let us even complicate this a bit by including in our sense of the tale's moral the kind of case it makes for this proposition.  A wise man, we might say, realizes that the rewards of power and fame are not sufficient to justify giving up the rewards of meditation, since with power comes the vexation of having to distract oneself with all sorts of trivial details and since the fame one acquires cannot be enjoyed beyond one's lifetime, and the pleasures of thought and reflection are intense and immediate. 

Now consider Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues."  This story has to do with the pressures that can lead us to want to simplify the lives of the people we care about, so that we can reduce our anxieties for their safety.  But it also has to do with the importance, for anyone (and hence for those who care about anyone in a reflective way) to have the dignity of being responsibility for conducting his or her own life.  More particularly, the story is concerned to get us to appreciate how difficult our concern for others can make it for us to discern what is at stake, for them, in their choices -- i.e., exactly how and why these choices are tied up with their idea of self-respect.  At the same time, it invites us to notice how this same concern might eventually enable us overcome our preference for shaping them into behaving in ways comfortable to us, and to make the effort to see how the risks they take might be justified in terms that we ourselves could come to understand, even when they have become so frustrated with the "guilt trips" we have worked on them that they have withdrawn from the attempt to get us to listen to their view of the matter..  We might say that this story is about some agonizing dilemmas we face when we deeply care about people (our siblings, our children, our really close friends):  how can we "be there" for them when their deepest needs take them in directions that spook us?  Sometimes, this story suggests, it can be that, if we can find the courage to imagine how what strikes us as "simply" frivolous and dangerous might be serious and admirable (though no less dangerous), we may be able to find the resources to support our loved ones in their (to us) alarming deviation from what we are comfortable with, to endorse and encourage them in the path they choose that is so different from the one we have chosen for ourselves.  And the story has to make us care about this truth (if it is a truth), by getting us to care about the narrator's struggle to come to terms with his fears for his bother Sonny's choices in life.  This is the sort of thing we mean by a story's "theme."

Briefly, then, a story's "reason for being" might be said to be the complex of issues that the author evidently cares enough about as to craft the story in such a way as to bring them before us for our contemplation.  In some cases, it may be, we may sense that the author is disposed to invite us, on reflection, to take a certain position rather than others on one or more of these issues.  When this happens, our sense of the story's theme will include not only these issues but the positions upon them we infer the story implicitly invites us to adopt.

(2) We have to come up with some account of how the author's decision to confront us with a character we are to understand as we understand the protagonist contributes to the reader's appreciation of what we have called attention to the story as concerned with on this level of theme.

The logical relationships among the logical elements of the assigned task

 If we now look back over what we've noticed about the logical elements (subtasks) we've broken the (overall) assigned task into, we can see that we've already noticed some important facts about the logical relationships among them.  It now remains to bring these into focus.  Let's try here to spell this out here in fairly full explicitness.  First, though, let's be sure we keep a couple of things in mind.

Now let's give it a try:

We need, first of all, to grasp the plot structure of the story as a whole
[so as to =>]

(1) determine the particular actions on the part of the protagonist that contribute to or shape the precipitating incident, the rising action, the climax, and the denouement of the plot 

[so as to =>]

(2) formulate a conception of the character of the protagonist that an adequate causal appreciation of the plot enables us to grasp
[To do this we need to]
determine the protagonist's actions, in the successive situations with which s/he is confronted 
[in order to =>]
infer the motives behind these actions 
[so that we can =>]
infer what assumptions and values the disposition to be moved in these ways are "expressions of" 
[in order to be on a footing to=>]
conceive the character's sensibility and priorities in terms of "traits of character"
[to put us in a position to be able to  =>]
ask ourselves how these traits can best be thought of as relating to each other.  (For example:  do some logically subsume others?) That is:  we want to go from a "list of traits" (previous step) to a grasp of the "structure of traits" that comprise the protagonist's character
[in order to put us in a condition to]
(B) explain how our grasp of the protagonist's character helps serve the story's overall theme.  
[To do this we need to]
form and state some notion of the issues we figure the story is designed to get us to think about by getting us to imaginatively saturate ourselves in the protagonist's predicament and to reflect on the implications of his/her deliberate or default choices, as these are determined by his/her character.
[Only when we've done this will we be on a footing to =>]

figure out one or more ways in which the nature of the protagonist's character helps to put these issues on the table.

Let's pause to consider what we've done.

We broke the assigned task down into its logical elements (its constituent tasks) and 

we got clear about how these tasks logically relate to each other.

Doing this two-fold analysis of the topic, in other words, provides you with a checklist for critically reading your latest draft, with a view to discovering opportunities for making it more systematic and complete, and (as a consequence) more deeply insightful.

In the meanwhile, it enables you to devise a provisional scheme for organizing your initial drafts.

Designing a provisional scheme of organization for your essay

Once we have a clear idea of all the things we need to do, and of how they logically relate to each other, we're in a position to figure out various broad ways that it might make sense to organize the essay we'll eventually end up with.  Here's a simple and straightforward one that might be a good one to work with at least at the outset.

Introduction 
Typical function:  to generate the question that the thesis of your essay is the answer to, and then state that claim.

How (here):  

Briefly (!!!) summarize the plot of the story (perhaps starting with the climax, and then indicating the rising action and the dénouement), and then

conclude your introduction with a statement of your thesis.  Examples:

  • This pattern of action serves to draw our attention to elements of the protagonist's character that point us towards an appreciation of the story's theme.
Body 
Typical function:  to explain (clarify) and demonstrate/defend your thesis.

How (here):

Show how the plot issues from the protagonist's character (given the situations with with s/he is confronted).

How?  There are a couple of different ways you might proceed here.

One strategy might be to go organize this part of the body around the sequence of actions that you've pointed to in the introduction.  For each turning-point, you would show how the motives behind the  protagonist's decision point to values and assumptions grounded in key personality traits.  (You could take the key plot episodes in sequence, or begin with the climax and work backwards and forwards.)  You'd end with a synthesis of these traits into some coherent picture of the structure of the protagonist's personality (hierarchies of traits; conflicts between different allegiances; priorities indicated by the way these conflicts are resolved -- if they are).

A different strategy might be to begin with your best ultimate formulation of the basic structure of the protagonist's personality.  You'd then show how each of the lower-order traits you've articulated contributes to various actions crucial in the plot.

Explain how this choice of plot type helps raise the issues that you see the story as designed to put on the table.

Lay out what you see as the thematic concerns that strike you as having motivated the construction of the story.

    Explain how the characterization of the protagonist you've described  helps to raise these issues.

Conclusion 
Typical function:  to indicate the importance of the thesis (now proved) by explaining some difference the thesis makes.  (I.e., raise the question "so what?" about the thesis.)
Here:  no need to do this, since an overall thesis of the form we've been working with in this hypothetical organizational scheme already contains within it a component about the significance of its kernel component.

An alternative way of organizing your carrying out of the overall task imposed in the assignment would be to assign different parts of it to the thesis and conclusion.

The introduction would introduce your thesis by  briefly summarizing the plot of the story, and then concluding with a statement of your thesis.  But in this scheme, your thesis would cover only part of the overall task of the assignment.  Example:

The body would then have the task of clarifying and defending this more limited thesis, by explaining how the protagonist's character is of more fundamental importance than the plot (i.e., how the function of the plot is to express the protagonist's character).

The conclusion would complete the assigned task by explaining what the significance of this authorial decision regarding plot type is.  (That is:  it raises the question "so what?" about the thesis just demonstrated.)  It would do this by laying out what you see as the more general issues the story seems to be designed to get us to think about, and by explaining how in particular the protagonist's exhibiting of the character s/he does contributes to raising or framing these.

Of course, there are other rational ways of distributing the essential tasks with respect to the basic parts of your essay.

For example, you might frame your introduction in some such way as this

Kennedy and Gioia maintain that, in the modern short story (as distinct from the traditional tale or fable), "the action usually grows out of the personality of its protagonist and the situation he or she faces."  They quote with approval the critic Phyllis Bottome, who says that "[i]f a writer is true to his characters they will give him his plot."  Y's story "X" is a case in point. 

If you start this way, then the body of your essay will have two distinct parts.  Here might be the thesis statements for the respective sub-sections:

The first section should take no more than a brief paragraph, and would bring into focus what the story's plot consists in.

The second section (the main and most extensive business) would be to demonstrate how the key elements of this plot (the actions that constitute the rising action, climax and dénouement) stem from the protagonist's character.  Here's where you'd infer motives behind actions, characteristic assumptions and values behind motives, and traits behind these in turn.

If that's how you think of the job of the body of the essay, then (to complete the assignment), in your conclusion you'd have to undertake two tasks:

You'd need to synthesize the traits you've come up with into some comprehensive picture of the protagonist's overall basic character.

And you'd have to point to some issues of importance that the nature and fate of this character brings into light.

How might such an analysis look in the case of a particular story?  Check out an example using I.B. Singer's "Gimpel the Fool".

You might also find it useful to work your way through the corresponding feedback memo on the other topic for the out-of-class essay.