New School 6

Rajeet Guha New School Homework 6 Ursula K. Le Guin is a world-class writer. She writes mostly in the genre of science fiction. Some time ago, she wrote a piece on literary criticism. This invaluable pearl in the star-studded jewelry of literary criticism is titled ‘Some thoughts on narrative.’ ‘Some thoughts on narrative’ is a short essay on literary criticism that weaves together the different strands of philosophy, psychology, physics and science fiction into a terse and beautiful essay on literary criticism. This essay has been taken from her book ‘Dancing at the edge of the world: Words, Women, Places.’ This book, comprises nonfiction essays, was written in 1989. Some thoughts on narrative is an essay that is exclusively concerned with literature. Le Guin talks about literary narrative in her piece. She says that in literary theory, narrative is a contentious subject. Narrative is related to language used in literature and this often sparks lively and animated debates between philosophers of different schools of thought like phenomenalism, formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism and deconstruction. Barring the literary theorists and other intellectuals, the general public has also shown a flicker of interest in the topic of narrative. She endeavors to know why raconteurs like her tell tales and also what it is about her stories that pique the interest of readers and listeners alike. She ponders on the definition of a story after conceding that she cannot precisely say what it is. According to her, neither literary theorists nor linguists have been able to come to terms with what a story is. All psychologists barring one have come up croppers when posed the problem of defining narratives. A psychologist named Simon Lesser describes narrative as a psychic process. As a starting point she turns to the classical wisdom of Aristotle in defining a narrative. According to Aristotle, narrative is synonymous with plot. A narrative or plot intrinsically has a beginning, middle and an end. Incidents are organized in a linear direction, time and space in a narrative. Causality is always covertly stated in a narrative according to Aristotle. According to the Greek polymath Aristotle, causality in any dramatic or epic play is always subtly embedded in the framework of time. According to Le Guin, narrative involves networking of events in time through space that can be either in an open or closed pattern; linear, spiral or recursive pattern. Narrative is a temporal and spatial voyage that bears witness to plenty of interconnected events and incidents. Narrative is the meat and potatoes of the story. Narrative usually eschews the present tense except in cases of scientific generalizations, anthropological and archaeological research, and investigative journalism. Narratives are inherently grounded in the past tense as a point of reference. This mooring in the past allows narratives to be told freely, smoothly and with vigor. In science, time is reversible but in literature it is the opposite. Equations, subatomic particles, cells and genes are unaffected by direction. In literature, direction is crucial. Time is irreversible in literature. A sentence in English can be read from left to right but not the other way around. In Hebrew, it is read from right to left but not the opposite. Equations in physics, mathematics or chemistry have the same meaning when read from left to right or right to left. In literature, stories told from an arbitrary past, imply that things will change with the passage of time, there are alternative scenarios and there is a causal link between two or more events; connection established between incidents. In the following paragraphs, Le Guin meshes the concepts of psychology and philosophy in her priceless piece of literary criticism. Narrative, according to Le Guin, is an escape mechanism from the trials and tribulations experienced by humans in their lives. It is a psychological defense mechanism employed by humans to escape their existential crises. It is a safety valve to let out or vent out the frustrations and struggles immanent in the daily lives of homo sapiens. In addition to the negative and troubling aspects of life, the milestones, developmental phases and positive aspects of life that is essentially the human condition is charted out in narratives or stories by humans. Narrative is a pivotal function of language. It is a basic task performed by any ordinary person. Learning to speak in any language is the first step in storytelling. Preverbal and nonverbal mental operations are outside the realm of the conscious mind, dominated by Freud’s ego or sense of rationality and reality. These preverbal and nonverbal mental operations cannot be articulated normally while conscious except through Freudian slips. Preverbal and nonverbal mental operations exist only in the unconscious mind. These consist of primal desires (Freud’s Id) and morally conscientious thought (Freud’s Superego). It is only in dreams that that these preverbal and nonverbal mental operations are realized or actualized, and only after analyzing these irrational mental thoughts and activities appearing in dreams can the symbolic or literal meaning of these dreams be clarified or made sense of. Most of our thoughts, impressions, reactions, fears, desires, aspirations and goals lie in our unconscious mind, something that is inaccessible to our conscious mind when we are awake or engaged in mundane tasks. These thoughts, impressions, reactions, fears, desires, aspirations, etc. are our responses to our past experiences and memories and also to our daily current experiences, encounters, perceptions, attitudes, etc. This repository of thoughts, desires and wishes in the unconscious is repressed in our mind. It is played out or manifested only in dreams. An accurate analysis and interpretation of dreams is not possible. It is through the falsification of dreams or distorting dreams that they can fit into a rational narrative. Our narratives, like dreams, are not just an objective reflection of what we experience and perceive in life but also a subjective and distorted refraction of our experiences through the prism of our worldview. Our narratives are an amalgam of the objective and the subjective, reality and fantasy, rationality and irrationality, fact and fiction and finally the known and the unknown. They tend to reflect our values, ideas, ideals, culture and reason as well as those whose are different from ours. ‘The Use of Force’ is a short story written by William Carlos Williams. Williams was an American poet, short story writer, memoirist and physician from Bergen in New Jersey. This short story is reflective of his experiences as a physician. He was a pediatrician. The story is written in a concise and crisp style of language akin to that of Ernest Hemingway. Williams’ economy of words is conspicuous. The story is in the genre of realism. The plot has been stripped down to the bare essentials. It is essentially that of a rural doctor in New Jersey who is well educated but lacks the polish and sophistication associated with urban doctors. The pediatrician treats patients, mostly children, who come from poor, ill-educated families. Mathilda Olson is one such child who is suffering from high fever from a few days. Her parents are worried to death and solicit the services of a physician. The girl has told her gullible and poorly educated parents that she doesn’t have a sore throat. But the physician knows children often try to conceal their illnesses and thinks Mathilda is lying. The physician feels that the child is suffering from diphtheria and wants to examine her throat. The child is stubborn and intractable. She resists the physician aggressively and even attacks him unsuccessfully on more than one occasion. Nonetheless, the physician is compassionate towards the child and is determined to save the child from a life threatening illness. The physician is fond of the child and feels that he must do his duty even if that means forcefully opening the child’s mouth and taking a throat culture. The physician is also a bit annoyed with the child and has become dogged in his will to open the child’s throat and ultimately that is what he does. The choleric child cries after being defeated by the physician. The defiant child feels humiliated and thinks that her guarded secret has been laid bare. She feels that her privacy has been invaded and she has only impotent tears of rage and shame. She also feels abandoned by her parents who have sided with the doctor. The child however cannot comprehend the gravity of the situation and has nothing but contempt and loathing for the physician. The parents steel themselves and feel that the momentary pain and discomfort will lead to relief and cure in the long term. The doctor is a phlegmatic person who is ethical and feels that force is needed for the greater good of saving the child’s life. Ultimately when the child physically attacks the doctor, the doctor’s personality metamorphoses from phlegmatic to choleric. The doctor becomes unreasonable for a brief while and acts in a headstrong manner and pries open the child’s mouth with a metallic spoon. The doctor also acts like the petulant child he is treating for a brief while. Later on, after his diagnosis of diphtheria is spot-on, he repents his peevish behavior and highhanded dealing of the situation. He feels sorrow and regret for the child and himself. As the story is told in the first person with the narrator/author as the protagonist, there is a brief aside where he says that in retrospect maybe he should have come back later to complete the diagnosis when reason would prevail over raw emotion. There is also we see a bit of metafiction here. Happy Endings is a short story by the Canadian intellectual and feminist writer Margaret Atwood. This short story is series of six short short stories or flash fiction that offers alternative scenarios with a different beginning and a distinct middle but the end is invariably the same. It is written from the third person point of view. The narrator is a third person omniscient narrator who knows everything about the characters. This short story is written in the metafictional style where the narrator constantly comments on the characters and events of the story. The narrator conveys her opinions in this short story. This is metafiction or fiction where she is continuously voicing her views on fiction. She is consistently saying what good fiction should be and what it should not be. This is fiction where she is writing about the aesthetics of fiction. This is in addition to being a short story, also a commentary on fiction. It is also an essay or piece of literary criticism or literary theory. Atwood has written this short story in a sarcastic or ironic vein. She is often narrating flash fiction playfully with plenty of tongue on her cheek. This metafictional narrative is a savage and scathing criticism of happy endings in short stories. In fact her title ‘Happy Endings’ is a satire on the genre of popular romantic fiction where conclusions always turn out to be happy or pleasant. Atwood subtly criticizes this genre where life is portrayed as a bed of roses or at the most with some struggle the ending is a fairy tale ending. Atwood poignantly shows that there are no tailor-made solutions in life. In fact, death is the only and ultimate certainty. Death is the eternal ending and the biggest truth in this uncertain life. She believes that fiction should depict reality. She also believes writers should focus on the beginning and middle of the story. She thinks that writers should religiously pay maximum importance to the middle part of the story. Characterization, setting and plot are important. Writers should focus on the interconnectedness of characters and events in the plot and implicitly show causality. The how and why of stories are to be given primacy of the what and what and what of stories. This short story is finally also an indictment of the stereotypical gender roles in society emanating from patriarchy. She thinks that society should be reformed in such a way that women should be able to break apart the manacles of bondage and genuflection to men and chart their own lives and careers according to their wishes and what benefits them. ‘Everything that rises must converge’ is a short story written by the marquee writer Flannery O’ Connor. It is a story written in the Southern Gothic genre. Flannery O’ Connor was a Southerner and this story like her other short stories is situated in the southern part of the United States or below the Mason-Dixon line. This story was published in her final anthology of short stories before she rested in peace at the tender age of thirty-nine. In this short story she brings a distinctive Southern flavor similar to what pervades her body of work. She brings together her mindset, her experiences, the viewpoint of her relatives and friends and in general Southern society and culture with its attitudes, mannerisms and biases. The story has been anchored to a period of American history in twentieth century where social upheavals and momentous changes were taking place at a breakneck pace. In this short story O’ Connor has portrayed the Zeitgeist in a society riven by deep-seated and deeply scarred divisions of race, class, religion, ideas, ideals and culture at a time in the 1960s when the scourge of segregation had been legally terminated and civil rights in the American South was in its embryonic state. Even though segregation had been ended in practice by law but in the psyche of the two races namely white and black segregation lurked insidiously at both the conscious and unconscious levels. Even though the original sin of slavery had been abolished about a century before, but its sinister shadow was still a menacing prospect that sometimes reared its ugly head. Segregation, the cursed child of slavery, was a specter that haunted and tormented the residents in the South during its ignominious and infamous reign and secondly also after its death. It would be apropos here to quote William Faulkner’s famous lines “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” In Janet Burroway’s book one of the chapters is called ‘The Tower and the Net’. In this chapter Burroway harps on the structure of short stories and novels. She underlines the indispensable importance of structure in fictional writing. Structure should not be explicit in a story. Instead structure should be subtle and be seamlessly woven into the plot, setting, characterization and form of the story. In this chapter she elucidates the concepts of conflict, crisis, climax, anticlimax and resolution in the story or novel. Secondly she discusses in detail the arc of the story as its plot. Thirdly she discusses patterns of power prevalent in the story between the protagonist and the antagonist and other characters. She then talks about the connections or bonding between people holding diametrically opposite views like the protagonists and antagonists. She also talks about the disconnections or the disruptions between the competing characters. She says that a story or novel must ultimately have a dénouement, which must be the interplay of the connection and disconnection. The connection is similar to the net with strong linkages or attachments while the disconnections or conflicts are analogous to people trying to climb and reach the top of tower first. Also, these concepts of connection, disconnection and denouement or resolution in literary theory bear an uncanny resemblance to the concepts of thesis, antithesis and synthesis in political theory. Burroway also distinguishes between story and plot. The former is a litany of events jotted down in a linear temporal order. The latter is the ordered and organized arrangement of events with the purpose of exposing their salience in drama, theme and emotion. Burroway then says that the distinction between the story and the novel is one of length. A story is short whereas a novel is long. Every story can be made into a novel and vice versa. In the last section of reading as writers, Burroway says that writers should peruse the works of other writers with a keen and discerning eye for detail. Writers when reading should see the strong points of every work and either imitate or even steal them. At the same time, writers should not repeat the mistakes that they observe in others while reading.