Coming to the different forms of narrative, one has to look closely at an epic convention called ‘Medias res.’ In the Iliad Homer plunges directly into the action in the middle of the Trojan War. More famously in ‘Paradise Lost’ Milton takes us directly to Satan ruminating and wallowing in Hell with his comrades. The action begins after Satan’s futile battle with God and his schemes for bringing further destruction onto God’s latest creation. The technique is important because many of the popular films and serials make use of this epic device in their narrative format even today. In the Rajanikanth blockbuster movie ‘Basha’ for example, the action begins in the present when Basha has come out,from being a gangster and a mafia don and is leading the life of a simple auto driver. In the movie Indra of Chiranjeevi, we see the hero in a humble abode in Varanasi but his past as a famous leader in Rayalaseema is behind him. Slum dog Millionaire, Forrest Gump and 12 Years a slave are other examples of this device. Apart from heightening the interest of the audience and getting them hooked to the story immediately, this narrative device allows the freedom to the writer to present the most crucial scene first and if necessary work backwards. It is more or less like imagining the crisis or the climax in a story first and from there constructing the beginning.
On the question of chronology in a story, it is sufficient to admit that a writer may use any technique that might suit the purpose or the effect that is desired. Since all writing is an effect to communicate something, the writer has to devise a strategy that could bring the best dividends.
Medias res or no, creation of effect in a narrative work is achieved in different ways. At the heart of literary experience is probably the desire of the artist, to convey the charm, the pleasure, the uniqueness or the grotesqueness of the experience that alighted on him or her to infuse the narrative process. Does the novelist not share the pleasure of telling the story? Does the novelist not expect the delight of the reader when he or she plans a delightful twist in the tale or a sudden trap into which the reader has been led innocuously? In the novel ‘To kill a mocking bird’ the reclusive Boo Radley turns out to be the savior of Jem and Scout as Ewell attacks them. ( What a delightful novel! It keeps coming back like a pellucid vision with all its simplicity and warmth) Even in a novel like Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco which is a spoof, a critique or a deconstruction of the conspiracy theory novels, in the Post modern vein, the novelist does plan the effect which could deflate the reader in the end (Yours faithfully included who was led in by the sweeping force of the mystery in the first chapters expecting something on the line s of The Name of the Rose) rather than give a grand revelation or a vision. Going across to the other end of the spectrum of literary experience, I would say my feeling when I read Franz Kafka’s The Trial and Metamorphosis was one of bewilderment. The thrill and excitement that one goes through while reading the novels, The Master of Ballantrae and The Man in the Iron mask is something nearer to an original discovery and I could trade something for the sheer joy of reading such books for the first time again, with my memory erased and fresh.( To be continued)