Argax Project:: Dissertation: A Rough Draft Node

Node Status: COMPLETE

Conclusion

Based on this review of four authors, we can now draw some general conclusions concerning the structure of narrative action.

Unity

First of all, the action should be a single, unified whole. This is either because it concerns a single action (Aristotle 1961) or revolves around a single central Idea of the author's (Freytag 1895).

Yet the action is made up of a series of separate events. What unifies these events is that they are connected by necessary or probable cause (Aristotle 1961, Freytag 1895), "logical or artistic necessity" (Propp 1968), or some other connective contingency (Chatman 1978). Speaking generally, we might simply call this necessity. An event is necessary to the tale if its displacement or removal would leave the whole "disjointed and disturbed" (Aristotle 1961).

An essential part of necessity is characters' motivation or praxis--how their emotions or thoughts lead to a will for action (Aristotle 1961, Freytag 1895). Believability of character motivations and the credibility of necessary connections contribute to the verisimilitude of the tale (Freytag 1895, Chatman 1978).

Completeness

Besides from being a unified whole, a story must be complete. Specifically, it must have a beginning, middle, and end. This usually implies some change of state--an initial condition, some change or problem, and then a final condition. This change of state often corresponds to a change of fortune for the protagonist (Aristotle 1961, Freytag 1895).

But more than a simple change, stories often involve some conflict concerning the protagonist. Freytag defines his climax in terms of the play and the counterplay, which refer to the protagonist actively working towards some end or else being the subject of external forces. In order to be complete, this conflict must be resolved by the end of the story.

The length and detail of a story--Aristotle's "certain magnitude"--varies greatly. Size has an impact on completeness, however, since generally there are more events and details whose various effects must be resolved before the conclusion of a long tale.

Morphology

Every story also has a macrostructure or formal morphology. At its simplest, story events occur during either the beginning, middle, or end of the tale (Aristotle 1961), or else within the bounds of Freytag's eight parts and crises. According to the conventions of a certain genre, we might determine a more detailed morphology, as Propp did for Russian folktales.

Chatman's point concerning an event's greater story context is also important to consider here. For instance, we may have an event in the world of the story, such as a killing. But it is only in terms of the story context that we can determine the importance or meaning of this event--whether it is a murder, a sacrifice, or act of mercy (Chatman 1978). Furthermore, these different story-contextualized events can fill different functions in advancing the story. For example, within Propp's functions, a murder might serve as an initial villainy, or the hero might murder the donor in order to receive the magical agent.

This example reveals three views of a story's action. We have the world-level: the event itself in the story world. We have the story-level: what that event means in terms of the greater story context. And we have the morphological-level: what abstract function, if any, the event serves in advancing the story.¹

Content

A story does not concern only form, but content as well. Indeed it is the content--the quality of the characters, the details of the world, the specific flavor of the events--that makes each narrative truly unique.

Exceptions

Finally, we must remember that not all narratives adhere strictly to these rules. Aristotle admits the existence of episodic plots that are neither unified nor complete. Chatman points out the existence of "antistories"--narratives that deny any linear sequence of events--as well as revelatory stories, where the focus is on the existents of the world rather than on the events. And even within a relatively well-structured story, some events do not need to be strictly necessary, as both Freytag's "ornamental episodes" and Chatman's satellites illustrate.

Still, if a story is well-formed, it should demonstrate these basic formal features: a unity of events through necessity, forming a complete whole with a beginning, middle, and end, and exhibiting a general macrostructure story-form.

==>

Works Cited

Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. S. H. Butcher. Ed. Francis Fergusson. New York: Hill and Wang, 1961.
Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978.
Freytag, Gustav. Technique of the Drama. Translated: Elias J. MacEwan. 6th German ed. Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Company, 1895.
Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. Translated: Laurance Scott. Ed. Louis A. Wagner. 2nd ed. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1968.

Notes

These three views of the same event are simply different levels of abstraction. This means they are not connected in terms of material and formal causes.