Summary and analysis of the chapter "STORY" from Aspects of Novel by E.M Foster.

STORY AS AN ASPECT OF NOVEL:

Edward Morgan Forster was an English novelist, short story writer and essayist. He is best known for A Room with a View (1908), Howard’s End (1910), A Passage to India (1924) and “Aspects of the Novel” originally delivered as a series of lectures at Trinity College.

Apart from the distinction between the two levels story and discourse, which is part of structuralist terminology, there is an older tradition which differentiates between story and plot. These two terms overlap only partly with the terms  story and discourse. Since the terms story and plot are still used frequently in English Studies, one needs to be aware of their meaning. The basic difference between story and plot was pointed out by Aristotle, who distinguishes between actions in the real world and units that are selected from these and arranged in what he calls mythos (Aristotle 1953). The terms story and plot as used in English Studies were introduced and defined by the novelist and critic E.M. Forster in his Aspects of the Novel (1927).

Forster defines story as the chronological sequence of events and plot as the causal and logical structure which connects events (see Forster, 1927: 93f).    These definitions need some further clarification:

Story is an important aspect of novel. A story is a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence — it simply tells us what happened and in what order. It is the time sequence which turns a random collection of episodes into a story. But chronological sequence is a very primitive feature and it can have only one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next. The only skill of a storyteller is their ability to wield the weapon of suspense, making the audience eager to discover the next event in the sequence.   

This emphasis on chronological sequence is a difference from real life. Our real  lives also unfold through time but have the added feature that some experiences have greater value and meaning than others. Value has no role in a story, which is concerned with the life in time rather than the life by values. And because human lives measured by time consist of nothing more than the business of   getting old, a story cannot sincerely lead to any conclusion but the grave.

The basis of a novel is a story — the narration of events in the order they happened — but storytelling alone can never produce a great novel. The simple chronological narrative of War and Peace only manages to achieve some kind of greatness because it has extended over space as well as time, and the sense of space until it terrifies us is exhilarating, and leaves behind it an effect like music. After one has read War and Peace for a bit, great chords begin to sound, and we cannot exactly say what struck them. They come from the immense area of Russia, over which episodes and characters have been scattered, from the sum-total of bridges and frozen rivers, forests, roads, gardens, fields, which accumulate grandeur and sonority after we have passed them.

Forster wrote Aspects of the Novel in 1927.” Aspects of the Novel” was a work, examining ‘aspects all English-language novels have in common: story, people, plot, fantasy, prophecy, pattern, and rhythm.’

While in the third century Aristotle had noted the subtle difference between ‘incident’ and ‘plot’, it was Forster in Aspects of the Novel who developed this idea and established the difference between ‘story’ and ‘plot’, defining a story as ‘a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence.’

Forster wrote a story ‘can only have one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story.’

‘A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality – “The king died and then the queen died” is a story.’ But ‘“the king died and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time-sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.’

Forster's terms have often been criticised. It has been argued that in a story like 'the king died and then the queen died' we automatically assume that the two events are connected simply because they are told one after the other (Chatman 1978: 45f). Some critics even claim that the distinction between plot and story is artificial and of no practical use in the analysis of literature (Wenzel 1998: 175).

There is no question that the distinction is artificial. In fact, the story itself, the mere sequence of events, is an abstract entity, a construct that exists only in our heads after we have read the narrative as presented in the text (Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 6).

Nonetheless, the distinction between story and plot is still widely (though not always consistently) used to differentiate degrees of connectivity between events in a narrative. And indeed, the story 'the king died and then the queen died' allows for a number of plots apart from 'the king died and then the queen died of grief'. It could also be: 'The king died and then the queen died because she ate of the same poisoned cake' or 'the king died and then the queen died of sheer irritation because he hadn't left her any money in his will'.

At its most basic, the novel tells a story. Forster uses a set of metaphors. He interchangeably describes the function of the story in a novel as either a ‘‘backbone’’ or a ‘‘tape worm.’’ He uses the image of a backbone to explain the role of the story as the internal structure that supports all other elements of the novel. However, he suggests the alternative image of a tapeworm in order to express the idea that the beginning and ending of the story in a novel is arbitrary, just as a tapeworm has no specified length and no discernible head or tail. The novelist must, regardless of where he begins or ends, touch upon a series of events that unfold over a span of time. Forster again uses a metaphor says ‘‘story is the lowest and simplest of literary organisms, yet it is the highest factor common to all the very complicated organisms known as novels.’’ He goes on to imagine the element of story as a ‘‘worm,’’ held up for examination on the ‘‘forceps’’ of the literary critic. There is nothing but curiosity in the story that defines it. He says that story is a narrative of event arranged in their time sequence and what the story narrates is life in time and it is never possible for a writer to deny time inside the fabric of his novel. Though some writer may dislike his clock but there is always a clock in the novel. As in the novel Wuthering Heights the writer Emily Bronte has tried to her clock. He compares the story with the daily life as it is also full of time sense. Along with the time the writer would includes the life by values as well. Scott’s the writer of “The Antiquary” had the primitive power of keeping the reader in suspense and playing on his curiosity. In it he has celebrated the life in time that must lead him to slackening of emotions and shallowness of judgements. He also describes the relationship between the twentieth-century novel Ulysses, by James Joyce, to the ancient Greek mythology of the Odyssey as that of ‘‘a bat hanging to a cornice’’. The novel, like the bat, has a life of its own yet clings to the original mythological text as an essential means of support. In further a metaphor drawn from the animal world. Forster, speaking again of Ulysses, adds that it is overrun with references to a variety of mythologies, to the extent that ‘‘smaller mythologies swarm and pullulate, like vermin between the scales of a poisonous snake.’’ A great novel like Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game has an almost negligible story but is rich in ideas, style, philosophical ideas, etc. 

There is a universal curiosity to know what happens next. Therefore, a successful story is one that keeps the audience guessing and engaged. Like in the Arabian Nights, Scheherazade saves her own life because she keeps the king wanting to know what happens next. Thus, a story is a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence. But in novels, as in life, there is something else that organises our experiences other than time—Forster classifies this as value. When a person looks back on his or her life, they do not remember events in perfect chronological order. The most intense occurrences loom above the others. Forster argues that a novel should be the same way—precedence should be given to value, although the clock cannot be forgotten. Time, however, can be ignored or hidden, but it must always be a touchstone in the novel or it becomes an incoherent mess. A story is not plot. Plot is cause and effect. A story doesn’t need to worry about time—it can be more ragged. What the story does is to narrate the life in time, and what the entire novel does, it pay double allegiance. The allegiance to time is imperative in the novel, no novel could be written without it. It’s never possible for a novelist to deny time inside the fabric of his novel. In novel there is always a clock. The time sequence cannot be destroyed without carrying in its ruin all that should have taken its place. The novel that would express values only becomes unintelligible and therefore valueless. A story can bring in elements that won’t pay off and appeals to what is primitive in us.