Plot is the way in which a story is narrated. The domain of the plot belongs entirely to the craft of the novelist where as the story belongs to the imagination of the novelist. To generate interest and also to sustain it, the novelist has to make use of this device, as a story told in a linear fashion would tend to be history and not a story. Plot generally operates by suppression of facts, misleading statements, hiding details or characters and putting the readers on a wrong scent. The writers in their omniscience can manipulate the story to create these effects and one of the best examples of a novel with a brilliant plot structure is ‘Great Expectations by Charles Dickens” In a story like “The Hound of Baskervilles” for example, the crucial detail that Mr. Stapleton and Beryl are husband and wife is masked till the end and they pretend to be Brother and sister. In the novel “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco the idea that Aristotle had written another book on the poetics of Comedy similar to his book on Tragedy is crucial to the suspense and why the murders are being committed in the monastery. In that sense plot is how the novelist organizes the story to make it more interesting to the readers. The smaller details in the plot can cause a major shift in the story. In the novel, The Mayor of Caster Bridge, the discovery of his ancestry is important towards shaping the fortunes of Michael Henchard.
The arrangement of events is a story. Staggering the arrangement of events to suit the novelist’s purpose can be called Plot. Starting a story in medias res for example and narrating the events that happened earlier in the latter part of the novel can be called a narrative technique aligned to the plot.
Another modern device employed by novelists, is to make use of multiple narrative voices to portray the unfolding of a particular turn of events. In the novel “Chronicle of a death foretold “by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the seminal point for the story, the murder of Santiago Nasar is portrayed through the experience of different ‘ actors’ who were present at the time. The effect of this narrative device is to let the ‘event’ itself remain dubious and shrouded in vagueness. The murder therefore is a historical occurrence. Yet it cannot be located as a specific experience, belonging to a person. Marquez is a known master in manipulating the story to suit his narrative purpose. In the novel 100 Years of Solitude, there is deliberate going back and forth in time which is how the story gets a mood: Of being an event stripped of time and hence universal in character. In the novel ‘The Feast of the Goat’ by Mario Vargos Llosa, the events surrounding the regime of Trujillo in The Dominican Republic are narrated through the experience of three groups in alternating chapters: Urania Cabral, The assassins of Trujillo and Trujillo himself.
Coming to the question of interest in a story, perhaps the successful novel is that which glues the reader to it and keeps him/her asking about what is going to happen next. Looking at films, I could give a number of examples which maintain this tension and anxiety in the viewer, probably owing to the shorter length of the film medium. A movie like “Then there were none” or “Diabolique” (French 1955) for example have this quality of an intense intrigue running through, and the viewer is drowned in the brilliance of the plot, trying to decipher the raison d’ etre of the perpetrator or their modus operandi. The plot of Pride and Prejudice for example is modeled in such a way that the three major characters Elizabeth Bennett, Mr. Darcy and George Wickham are presented in false colors in the first part of the novel. The irony of the plot is such that all these three characters shed their acquired demeanor and behave true to their self in the latter part of the novel. Without this arrangement of the plot, the novel would be a teary eyed romantic love story and not a battle of wits and courage that Jane Austen has penned. Again in the novel Jane Eyre, the crucial detail regarding the deranged wife of Mr. Rochester holed up in the attic is not revealed to us until the day of Jane’s wedding. When Jane leaves the mansion of Rochester to become a part of Nature she miraculously reaches the home of her cousin St John Rivers and his sisters whose presence is hidden and revealed to the reader only at that point of time. Continuing the discussion in the same vein, one has to examine what are the other tools at the disposal of the novelist? Dialogue should be considered to be one of the essential parts of a novel. Yet such a proposition could be a over simplification. Where does one find dialogue in the chapter of the Grand Inquisitor in Brothers Karamazov? Or how does one justify, the meandering, repetitive conversation in the play ‘Waiting for Godot?’(To be continued)