Reading Imaginative
Literature
In This Chapter
- Telling a story with meaning: parables, allegories, and fables
- How the characters fit in
- Exploring the themes
- The importance of setting and imagery
When a writer sits down to work on a piece of fiction, he or she doesn't necessarily know what devices will be applied throughout the story. The devices tend to grow as the piece of writing develops.
In this chapter, you learn what it takes to write a piece of fiction so that you have a better understanding of how it needs to be read. It's not just about what the author wants you to take away from the book, but how the message is presented.
Creative Minds at Work
What do you think happens when an author sits down in front of a computer screen or with pen and paper in hand (the old-fashioned way) and decides to write a story? Well, it depends on the author, that's for sure, but they all have one objective in mind, which is to uncover a deeper truth about life that you can relate to.
Some writers will just think for hours before they ever put a single word on the page.
They develop characters in their minds; they hear them speak; they give them hair and eye color and physical gestures. Sometimes a writer will start with an outline— a rough idea of the story line (the plot) and who the players will be (character sketches). But not everyone is that organized. Sometimes a writer sits at a computer (or in front of that blank white sheet of paper) and starts to write anything and everything that comes to his or her mind. Or, if you're a writer like Amy's father (an author of historical novels), you might have put yourself to bed as a child every night with a story you made up about Native Americans and Jesuit priests. The story grows and grows until it has to be written, and what appears will often surprise everyone, especially the writer.
If a writer were to stop and think every few sentences about what writing techniques to use, the piece would probably never get written. Most writers concentrate first on getting the story on paper. While the writer thinks about the story on her way to a day job, or before falling asleep at night, thoughts about creative storytelling devices will certainly come to mind and will eventually be employed to move the story along, but at the outset all that matters is that the words make it to the page.
Allegory and Parables
To convey your feelings, ideas, beliefs, thoughts, and dreams to another human being is never easy. Some people are better communicators than others, but it is difficult to tell someone how you feel in such a way that they will feel it, too. That's the job of the fiction writer and the power of allegory. Some of the most notable allegorical storytelling can be found in the Bible. This book contains countless stories that have not only been the foundation of Christian belief, but have taught people meanings and feelings for centuries. For example, take a look at this passage:
“Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children”---(Matthew 14:13 -21 NRSV)
What does it mean that Jesus Christ was able to feed thousands of people with just a little bit of food? To take the story literally (the surface story), it would be one of the many miracles performed by Jesus Christ in the Bible. When you take a closer look at the story and dig at the metaphor contained beneath the surface, you will most likely find several meanings, one of which is that every person has the power to nurture others with prayers and hope. In other words, the faith of one can influence any.
For Jesus Christ to make himself understood to the people, he had to speak in parables; in other words, teach his truths by means of stories with embedded metaphors. There are many religions that use allegory and parables to help people understand deeper meanings. Examples include stories of Hindu gods and goddesses; stories about Buddha; and the ancient religions of gods and goddesses worshipped in Greece Rome , Egypt
If religion were simply preached at you without giving you a story behind it, it might not be as easy to understand—or as interesting, for that matter. Theologians understand the power and conviction of the allegory as much as fiction writers do.
The more metaphorical the story the more likely it is that the reader will absorb the deeper meaning. Many storytellers try to communicate an idea or belief to you by disguising the theme in the form of a story. By doing so the writer is asking you—the reader—to figure it out for yourself, because all answers that bear any meaning for you must ultimately come from you.
A Whale of a Story
Moby-Dick, by American author Herman Melville (1819-1891), is one of the best examples of allegorical American fiction because of its depth and subject matter. On the surface Moby-Dick is a story of the whaling industry and one sailor's search to destroy an infamous sea legend, a whale named Moby Dick. However, look a little deeper and you will find much more than a simple fish story. In Moby-Dick, Melville takes on the age-old philosophical theme of good versus evil.
Is Melville right in his hypothesis? Do we all have to confront the darkest sides of ourselves at some point in our lives? That's what you need to decide for yourself when you read the book. What truths, if any, does the author touch inside of you? After you have uncovered the mystery that Melville has set before you, you will reach an understanding with the book and with the author. Uncover the metaphors and see what you can relate to. What are your feelings about good and evil? Are they innate qualities or are they acquired through living? How does the struggle of good versus evil affect your life? What does Melville say about the strength of the individual through Ishmael's tale of the captain and that white sperm whale?
What's in a Name?
Often characters represent something allegorical within the story. Sometimes they are represented as subtle symbols, whereas at other times they just scream out at you either by name or by action. In other words, sometimes you have to search for the symbolism, and other times the author makes it more obvious to the reader. Let's return to Moby-Dick for an example of characters used as symbols—and there is nothing subtle about them!
Melville approaches the issue of good and evil in a symbolic way by relying on several biblical references, the most obvious of which are the names Ahab and Ishmael. These are carefully chosen names that point us in the direction of further inquiry. Why would Melville use these names instead of, say, Will and Sam?
From its origins in the Bible, the name Ishmael has become synonymous with the orphaned outcast of society. In the Bible, Ishmael was the son of Abraham and a slave girl. Abraham's wife, Sarah, thought she could not have children despite the fact that she was promised a child by God. When Sarah finally did have her promised child, Isaac, Ishmael and his mother were cast onto the streets.
Ishmael in Moby-Dick is new to the world of whaling and he is the eyes and ears of the reader. He is the outsider on the ship and therefore can see the events aboard the whaling ship with a fresh eye. As he sees it, we see it. As the reader, you are as new to this world as Ishmael himself. In the Bible, Ahab is the king of Israel Israel
Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick is not unlike King Ahab in his lust for revenge. Captain Ahab searches the globe for the white sperm whale that had previously maimed him. Moby Dick is known by all sailors for his ferocity—he has destroyed everyone who has attempted to destroy him. Yet Ahab will not be deterred and is willing to risk his ship and the lives of his crewmen in an effort to quell his anger and hatred.
Fables
Some of the most memorable nonbiblical allegories can be found in the form of the fable. A fable differs from a parable in that a fable usually includes some unbelievable action or some strange characterizations such as talking animals. Fables hide a metaphor for one of life's many lessons. One of the most well known of Aesop's fables is The Fox and the Grapes, a story about a fox (of course) who stumbles across a grapevine. He's thirsty and would really like a nice fresh juicy grape or two. But the ripest of the bunch is on a higher limb and he can't reach it no matter how hard he tries. Finally he gives up and haughtily says to him, "I bet they were sour anyway." Have you ever heard someone say "it sounds like a case of sour grapes"? That's where that expression comes from, as do many of our English expressions.
Every fable has a meaning that can usually be summed up in one easy sentence. In the case of this story, the underlying meaning is "It is easy to despise what you cannot get."
So That's What It Means!
If you read into a story and find the hidden meanings, they are your own discovery and will hold a more valuable and deeper meaning for you. Even if you don't personalize the message, you will see and understand it, and that means everything when you are trying to become a critical reader.
As you know from living your life every day, the most valuable lessons learned are the ones you learn on your own. Sometimes you need a little nudge, but until you figure it out for yourself you will never fully understand the messages that are handed to you.
Fiction is often allegorical. It is the good fiction writer's task to give the work a deeper, more global meaning than what is happening in the surface story. That, and the ability to allow the reader to find the hidden meaning, is what make writing fiction an art. On the other hand, some fiction writers write purely for entertainment. What you take from the book and how you relate to it may not go any deeper than the surface—and it's not supposed to. There may be smaller life lessons in the story, but the writer is not necessarily intending to do anything but allow you to relax and absorb.
Tools of the Trade
Like a carpenter needs tools and a painter needs paints and a paintbrush, a writer uses tools as well. These are different tools, they are not ones you pick up and hold; but without them, a story would not be complete. Here is a list of just a few of the literary devices and techniques writers frequently use in allegorical stories. They fall into the category of figurative language, or language in which the literal meaning of the words is different from the intended meaning. (We take a closer look at figurative language in Chapter 9.)
• Metaphor. A direct relationship in which one idea or thing substitutes for another without being directly stated.
• Simile. An indirect relationship comparing one thing or idea to another usually using the words like or as.
• Personification. Human thoughts, perceptions, and actions are attributed to inanimate objects or to ideas.
• Symbolism. The use of objects or images to represent abstract ideas. A symbol must be a visible or tangible thing, whereas what it represents must be universal.
• Hyperbole. An exaggerated description.
Characters Make the Story
One of the most important things a writer will do for his or her story is invent memorable characters. Characters can't exist just for the sake of the action. Characters exist in a story for a far bigger purpose. The characters are an integral part of the story—the part that the reader will attempt to identify with or even judge or deny.
The characters tell the story, live the story, have the relationships within the story, and judge the action and other characters; they are what makes a work of fiction come alive. Every book you read will use characters to help you find a bigger meaning. Characters in a book will always be representative of you, of people you know, of relationships you've had or will have, or of people in the world that you may have encountered or will encounter. They are the observers and the actors. Without them we would be left with little more than descriptions of places or seasons. Without characters in whatever form they take, there can be no story. (See Chapter 8 for more on choosing characters.)
Some characters will not shout "symbol" as loud as Ahab and Ishmael in Moby-Dick, but have more subtle messages for the reader. In Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, for example, we are confronted with far more subtle characterizations. But the way Woolf has developed the main character in this book speaks volumes about character and metaphor. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf offers us a character whose personality and purpose is evident from the first line of the story to the last. In the first line of the story—"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself"—Woolf gives us an immediate impression of a gentle woman of possible means. The very idea that someone else could buy her flowers for her implies that she could have sent someone else.
Of course, that person could be anyone, but one of the many scenarios is that someone works for her. We, of course, must read on to be sure. We know right away that there is a reason for buying flowers that day. Does she buy flowers every day or is there a special occasion involved? And why does she need to choose her own flowers? Does she normally buy flowers? If so, what is different about this particular day? Mrs. Dalloway has some kind of purpose, which will also make us wonder whether taking charge is
part of her personality, generally speaking. Literally, all we know from this first line is that Mrs. Dalloway will buy flowers, but this one sentence implies so much more, from who Mrs. Dalloway is to what is going on in her life. While Mrs. Dalloway is blissfully ignorant of her own sense of loss in the life she has chosen, we—the readers—see it and feel it for her. In the novel, her situation is comparable to another seemingly unconnected story line and character in the book. Septimus Warren Smith is a World War I veteran suffering from the trauma of his war experiences and makes a conscious decision to kill himself rather than face life in an asylum. Mrs. Dalloway in her ignorant bliss and Septimus in his tortured mind have both made similar decisions. Mrs. Dalloway has committed emotional suicide, whereas Septimus has committed physical suicide. With her last line of the book, Woolf brings the character of Mrs. Dalloway full circle: "For there she was." This was her life. This is the one she chose, and this would be the one she lived, whereas Septimus, too, chose the life he would not live.
Basically the story of Mrs. Dalloway is one big character sketch. Mrs. Dalloway goes through life sampling what it has to offer. Each delight is a joy in its own right. She never has a yearning to specialize or to be "superb" at anything, she just longs to live and be herself. Being able to enjoy life is Mrs. Dalloway's gift and what makes her character come to life. That's how Virginia Woolf wanted her readers to experience her, but at the same time there's a bittersweet sadness that meanders its way through her life based on the decisions she has made. The use of characters in a work of fiction is not a device in itself, but how they fit together using symbolism and theme is a device. For example, the last line of Mrs. Dalloway ("For there she was") reflects the meaning of the first line ("Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself"). This is a device that Woolf uses to solidify your understanding of who this character is—one line parallels the other and helps you make a conclusion about the personality of Mrs. Dalloway.
Dissecting the Theme
When an author begins to write a story, it's essential that he have a concept of the theme he's trying to communicate to the readers. It's fine to have an exciting story and lots of great characters, but what's the point of assembling them all in one plot if there is no real meaning to the story? What "truth" about life does the author want to convey to the reader? Everyone has a set of truths that they hold as a means of identifying themselves there are personal truths, and there are general truths. These "truths" that the author attempts to convey to the reader are what constitute the overall theme of the story. The best way to try to identify a theme is to try to state the theme in a single sentence. For example, In Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, the surface story is about a young boy, Huckleberry Finn, a child of nature unschooled, without the manners of society, with a good heart and wild spirit who travels down the Mississippi River with Jim, an escaped slave. They are two different people, of different ages and races, but they are equal in every other sense—they are both human beings and they both seek freedom (Huck from his cruel, greedy, drunken father, and even the Widow Douglas and her "sivilizing" ways; and Jim from slavery). The raft becomes their home, the river becomes their world, and as they float along, they learn about life from each other.
There are many other themes and truths to be uncovered regarding Mark Twain's thoughts and feelings about hypocrisy, religion, the role of imagination, about racism and prejudice, and finding one's own truth as Huck is always trying to do—a kind of model for the rest of us who try to make sense of the same things. But the main theme is this: All human beings are free and equal no matter what rules society puts in place.
Personal Themes
Maybe an author is fascinated by his own family history because of the interesting stories he heard in childhood, or because of the interesting family members who were very much like characters he could imagine in a book. When combined, these reallife experiences can make for some wonderful stories.
Contemporary author and New York Times correspondent Rick Bragg tells us about the loved ones in his life in at least two of his books, All Over but the Shoutin ' and AvasMan. He tells the story of his mother in one book and of his father in the other. His truth is about coming to terms with what his family and what his connections to his family mean to him. The theme of his work is developed around how his protagonists lived their lives. He wants us to know them as he knew them or learned about them. But why would we care about his family? What can we learn from what his family meant to him?
This is where the art comes in. Rick Bragg uses real people from his own life history to tell us something about life in the rural South during the twentieth century. But he also tells us about suffering, sorrow, and the struggle to survive by using humor and wit. He shows us how his family made their way in this world in terms of stories told to him—stories both real and imagined.
What Bragg has written is a fictional autobiography. In other words, he is writing about what he knows to be true through memory and storytelling, but he fills in the blanks to make the story complete and readable for those who do not know him, or his family, or anything about the South for that matter.
He does this by creating conversations, characters, scenes, and settings. He is not attempting to recreate facts as they occurred but to tell us a story he imagines.
Taking it beyond the realm of fact into imagination is what makes his work fiction. Like any work of good fiction, Bragg hides both truths and mysteries for us to discover beneath his story lines. He touches his readers by writing about a particular theme in such a way that allows us to relate to the aspects that have touched all of our lives in one way or another: being poor, sad, overworked, provoked, angry, jealous, vengeful, feeling foolish, or trying to make others feel foolish. He looks at flaws in his own world that have universal meaning for everyone.
Universal Themes
Although some themes appear only in individual books, other themes are taken on by many authors. There is a saying that there are no new stories, only new ways to tell them, and you can apply that when you think of some of the pervasive themes in literature.
There are countless universal themes that everyone in the world can relate to, and these are what fiction writers try to communicate when they construct their stories. One universal theme in literature is the victimization of women. Female and male writers have explored this theme for centuries. Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, more recently Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale, and (as you read earlier) Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter all take on the theme of female victimization. What happens to women if they so much as attempt to break societal rules and live their lives with the same freedoms that the men in their society have? Well, there is rarely a happy ending to these stories. Many of the women die at the end of these stories, either by suicide or by execution—and if they don't die, someone else suffers the agony of their desire to be free individuals.
The women in most of these novels are not shrinking violets. They are strong-willed, intelligent women who find it hard to deny their desire for independence and the need to pursue their happiness despite a society that does not allow women access to the same freedoms as men. The message is, in many cases, that the desire to be free is even stronger than the threat of suffering if they attempt to break the rules of society.
The reason the theme of female victimization is still so prevalent in fiction is because it touches so many societies worldwide. Perhaps these authors were trying to make a statement not only within their respective societies, but also to the world at large. What was the statement? Well, when you read these books, you can figure it out for yourself. If we tell you here, how will you ever incorporate the message into your own knowledge base of global understanding?
Okay, okay ... how about this: The desire for freedom and equality is so powerful that people are willing to risk everything, even their lives, to achieve it. Or to be more specific to the plight of women, you could say that the imposition of societal law on only one part of the population in an effort to establish control and assert male dominance is unjust and cruel, especially when it defies the innate desires and the rights of women.
Cultural and Regional Themes
Whereas some themes are personal or universal, others are cultural. For example, some themes are specific to a certain country or region of the world. There are even themes within one society that some relate to more than others. African Americans, for example, will most likely relate to a story about racism and slavery in a different way than a Caucasian person or an Asian person might.
A good example of a regionalized theme is American fiction. The United States
Imagery and Setting
Where a story takes place is as important to the theme as character and any literary device. The setting will determine who the characters are and how they interact. A setting can be symbolic in itself, as can the details of the location. For example, go back to Huck and Jim on that raft: a Caucasian boy and an African American man isolated together on a raft—a symbol of freedom, the vehicle that takes them away from their oppressive lives. The river gives them samplings of what life in that region of America Hudson River rather than the Mississippi River , they would have to have been different characters, and their experiences would be completely different.
The imagery that any author describes is a symbolic device used to help move the story along and make the theme more evident to the reader. Why did Melville feel the need to set his story of good versus evil on the sea? What imagery does he use to push his theme forward, to lift it from the confines of life beneath the surface to a place more obvious to the reader? Although it is true that the author wants to obscure the theme so that you can figure it out for yourself, he or she doesn't want the theme to be lost. He wants it within your reach, and will employ devices to make the theme pop out at you here and there throughout the story. In Moby-Dick the whale is larger than human beings while the ocean is larger than life itself. It is unpredictable, beautiful, dramatic, and cruel all at the same time—not unlike the struggles of human existence.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) is a uniquely American storyteller of the nineteenth century. Thematic concerns about the young country of America Hollywood
Setting is vital to Cooper's writing. If Cooper had lived in England Europe ) and the new world (America
Cooper's descriptions and themes are important for people to read even now because they take you back to what the original colonists may have seen, known, and felt. He gives you descriptions and vivid imagery of what America
The Least You Need to Know
• Authors employ literary devices in fiction writing to help the reader identify the meaning of the story.
• Allegorical literature is used to help readers find answers for themselves.
• Character analysis is essential to discovering theme.
• In addition to universal themes, there are cultural and regional themes in fiction.
• Imagery and setting are as important to the theme as the characters themselves.
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