ful reader may well feel some slight curiosity as to possible details behind the bare statement that Naaman was "a great man with his master because by him the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria." And the "little maid": certainly there is material for narrative elaboration in her implied story, for all we know is that the Syrian host had carried her away from her native land and that she now waited on Naaman's wife. What were the particulars of her capture and separation from her kindred? How came she to know of Elisha's wonderful healing powers? Had she, perhaps, personal knowledge of the prophet's dealings with the Shunammite woman? Then, too, the scene by the banks of the Jordan, when the Syrian captain, yielding to his servants, humbles himself and follows the command of the prophet, and before their very eyes the miraculous cure is effected: certainly here is matter for dramatic enlargement. But were these and other possible outlines filled in with details of descriptive and narrative embellishment, we may doubt whether the more elaborate result would possess the effectiveness of the simple original. It would certainly lack the unity that comes from the selection of a few essential, concrete, direct details.

But, as has already been explained (p. 183), the consideration of the mere concrete particulars does not exhaust the subject of plot unity. Not only must the conception of the event itself be definitely and clearly ordered, but often the emotional note, the atmosphere, of the narrative must be equally clear. Gibbon's tendency to belittle all forms of revealed religion, Hume's skepticism, Hardy's dreary philosophy of life, Macaulay's utilitarianism, Milton's majesty - these are but types of the emotional unity that characterizes all narrative writing possessed of what may be called indi

viduality and rising above the mere chronicling of successive events in their order. Unity of this sort, entering into the very essence of plot organization, lies close to what is called individuality of style. On analysis this abstract emotional unity is found to depend largely upon masterly but unconscious selection by the writer: he chooses just those details that are consonant with the intangible thing known as personality; he rejects those that are discordant; and complete unity — alike concrete and abstract — characterizes his finished composition.

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(b) Unity in Complication

Under unity of plot structure something must be said of complication, although the various methods of ordering details of the action are later to be taken up more particularly under the head of coherence. It will be recalled that the secondary meaning of the term "plot" turns on the association of the word with the allied term 'complot," and connotes the idea of a woven pattern composed of many threads. Now a plot thread, or strand, we may define as any one of the various lines of action into which the main action itself may be resolved. For illustration we may revert to the narrative of Naaman and Elisha. The principal threads of this story are, in the first part, those of Naaman and Elisha, to which, in the second part, is added that of Gehazi. Subordinate threads of action are those of the "little maid," of Naaman's royal master, and of Jehoram, the Israelitish king. All of these individual strands are so interwoven one with another as to form in their totality a narrative pattern with entire harmony of effect. The more highly complicated story embodied in the Book of Esther furnishes a more detailed example of threefold plot. Here

we have the individual threads of Esther, Mordecai, and Haman, united into a considerably complicated piece of narrative writing. The structure of this particular instance of plot complication will be taken up in greater detail later.

Narratives consisting of a single plot thread are not common. Even in simple plot, consisting of a single main strand, threads of minor narrative importance are usually interwoven. The type would be represented as follows: the heavy

horizontal line re

presents the single

central narrative

strand, and the finer lines the auxiliary

FIG. 2

strands that successively enter into the plot and incorporate with it. Such narratives are familiar in biographic sketches, and in stories of the Robinson Crusoe variety, - the "picaresque" type,1-in which the career of the hero, usually an adventurer, presents merely a central theme to which are attached the various events of the general action.

To sustain unity amid the complexity of threads forming a plot pattern is not easy, owing to the impossibility of representing coincident actions simultaneously. The writer's task is to present a unified pattern, yet he is compelled by the exigencies of composition to develop but one thread at a time. The familiar instance from Ivanhoe, the siege of Torquilstone Castle, has already been referred to (p. 56). Scott's problem is to secure a thoroughly unified plot picture, while at the same time following three distinct lines of action. The respective transitional chapter introduc

1 From the Spanish picaro, a rogue.

tions show how the author endeavors to cope with his problem:

Leaving the Saxon chiefs to return to their banquet as soon as their ungratified curiosity should permit them to attend to the calls of their half-satiated appetite, we have to look in upon the yet more severe imprisonment of Isaac of York.

While the scenes we have described were passing in other parts of the castle, the Jewess Rebecca awaited her fate in a distant and sequestered turret.

What reader is not familiar with such types of phraseology as the following, all indicating the writer's consciousness that he must unify the reader's grasp of the various threads entering into the plot structure?

While the events recorded in the preceding chapter were passing, the Marshal Almagro was engaged in his memorable expedition to Chili. Prescott: Conquest of Peru.

The commander-in-chief, meanwhile, lay at Xuaxa, where he was greatly disturbed by the rumors which reached him of the state of the country. - Id.

It is now time to relate the events which, since the battle of La Hogue, had taken place at Saint Germains. -- Macaulay: History of England.

While Wentworth was thus working out his system of "Thorough" on one side of St. George's Channel, it was being carried out on the other by a mind inferior, indeed, to his own in genius, but almost equal to it in courage and tenacity. Green: Short History of the English People.

The difficulty lies in the fact that, if the individuality of the various narrative threads is greater than that of the main action in its totality, unity of effect is lost.

Of course plot structure is not usually dependent upon mere parallelism among the narrative threads. Complication could hardly result from such ordering. The strands constantly converge and diverge, now meeting, now parting. The points at which two or more narrative lines meet in a common action are known as "knots, and on their frequency depends the degree of plot complexity. Again to refer to the story of Naaman for illustration: we have a convergence of threads when the little maid tells her mistress of the wonderful healing power possessed by the Israelitish prophet. The threads of Elisha and Naaman meet when, as a result of the girl's words, the Syrian captain stands before the prophet's door and is directed to bathe in Jordan. There is a knot in the Naaman and Gehazi threads when the avaricious servant runs after the Syrian and asks of him gifts for the prophets of Ephraim. The outline of the story, with its successive principal strands and knot-complications, may be roughly represented thus:

In narratives of complicated plot structure the usual method of development presents the successive entangling of several knots followed by the "unknotting," or dénouement, as it is technically called,-in which the various mysteries and situations are resolved. In the type of narrative known as the "detective story" the procedure is modified to this extent: the story begins with plot complication already complete, and the dénouement constitutes practically the entire narrative. We have here indications