of what are really two radically different processes of construction. One may be called inductive, and the other deductive. By the inductive process the writer weaves his plot pattern, thread by thread and knot by knot, as he proceeds, ultimately producing the finished work. This is the method of the historian, the biographer, the chronicler. By the deductive process the writer places before the reader a completed pattern at the very outset, and then by a sort of analytic process shows how it was put together. This device is effective in that it arrests the attention to begin with, and then by successive complications endeavors to hold it through the dénouement process. Thackeray's Henry Esmond presents an interesting example of the two methods in combination. The story begins at Castlewood with a scene in which plot threads are already considerably complicated, and the reader's curiosity is speedily piqued as to young Esmond's relations to his surroundings. From this opening the plot advances for an entire chapter, then suddenly reverts several years and proceeds to build up the various complications that made possible the opening scene. When this has been accomplished, and it takes some five or six chapters, — the narrative progresses along its regular course to the close. The method is attended by danger to plot unity unless the convergence of plot threads and the successive knot complications seem inevitable and become parts of a single well-defined pattern. The difficulty that has confronted many readers of Esmond is ultimately one of failure to grasp the unity of the plot scheme. If once the mutual relations of the various strands become evident, the course of the narrative proceeds smoothly enough, and interest does not flag. In fact, the secret of unity in structure lies in the ability of the writer so to organize the constituent parts

of the complex plan that they shall seem not complex at all but essentially one.

(c) Point of View in Plot Structure

In the consideration of unity as an element in plot structure point of view plays no small part. The attitude of the writer has already been discussed in its relation to characterization; it is no less important as an element in plot ordering. Character portrayal, we have seen, gains in consistency and completeness when its exposition is presented from a single definite angle, or, it may be, from a series of definite angles. So with the details that constitute action: the angle from which they are observed will have important bearing upon the totality of the final effect. The movements of the players in a football game produce wholly different impressions upon the spectator who knows little of the game and upon the coach who has trained one of the teams. To the one, the rapid movements that follow the kicking or the snapping of the ball are utter confusion: a mere welter of flying legs, violent concussions, and prostrate forms. To the other, this same confusion resolves itself into a thoroughly systematized tactical manoeuvre each player is sustaining his part in a preconcerted piece of strategy; instead of chaos there is order; unity and system characterize every movement. So it is with the organization of plot in narrative writing. The attitude of the writer to his facts has a far-reaching effect upon the ultimate unity of his plan.

More even than that: as in setting and in characterization, so in plot, variety in point of view-provided that it still be definite - will contribute largely to unity of effect. One is seldom content with viewing a cathe

an

dral from the west front only; he must consider it at close range, now from one angle, now from another. He studies it perhaps from some more distant vantage-point as well, and from the various points of view in common he forms his complete conception of the great building,nave, transepts, towers, all unite in one satisfying whole. In the same way, the historian and the novelist approach their narrative from changing — but ever definite gles. A part of the adventures attending the rescue of the good ship Hispaniola will be given by Jim Hawkins, and still others by Doctor Livesey. We learn some of the details of the siege of the castle by looking through Rebecca's eyes and from the tower, but others by moving in person among the besiegers outside the walls. Yet the complete account will be thoroughly unified.

But unity is not the only characteristic served by maintaining a definite point of view - especially by the shifting point of view just set forth. When we order the details of action from more than one angle of observation, we secure a conception more varied and hence more interesting. The plot, thus, with increased unity, gains in force, or effectiveness, as is evident in the instances cited above, the South Sea adventure and the affair at Torquilstone. In expounding point of view as an element in characterization, it seemed best to approach the subject from (a) the angle of some personage in the narrative, (b) the focus of several angles, (c) the wholly external angle. In studying point of view in plot structure the student will find it sufficient to note simply temporal and spatial angles of approach. In relation to time, the narrator may place himself on some definite temporal vantageground and weave his plot threads and complications as

matters wholly of the past. In such cases he usually adopts the historian's impersonality toward the events chronicled. Of course he may modify this, as in the autobiographic method, the events still being treated as belonging to the past, the writer still participating in them to greater or less degree. These two attitudes are illustrated respectively in Nicholas Nickleby and David Copperfield: in the one the writer's position is objective; in the other, subjective. In cases of the latter sort we have increased vividness, and the reader feels as if he were in the very centre of the action. The effect is often highly dramatic; the sense of definite time is forgotten; the past merges insensibly into the present.

The spatial point of view is closely allied to the matter of setting, but the student of plot structure must not neglect it. The narrator views his arena as a spectator gifted with power to see every detail visible or invisible, or he is himself an actor - perhaps the protagonist himself with the limited vision of actual life. Owing to the close relations that in fiction exist between action and character, the angle of omniscience is more likely to prevail in this type of narration. In the chronicling of historical events the author's attitude is a modification of the omniscient to the extent that it is the attitude of an authority whose pronouncements as to motives, causes, and results we may accept or reject at our pleasure. We may question, for instance, the narrator who tells us that the history of the English Church has been conditioned largely by certain Tudor characteristics in Henry VIII; but in Esther we do not question the sufficiency of the statement that "Haman thought in his heart To whom would the king delight to do honour more than to myself?"" In this case, as well as in the case of the historian, we have the objective

point of view of one who stands apart and knows; but on the one hand we are in the realm of the intellectual; in the other, of the emotional.

An interesting study in point of view as an element in plot structure is presented by Balzac's story La Grande Bretêche. The narrative is, in the broad, an example of the first-person type of approach already noted on page 158, but this passes through many successive phases. At first it is largely a matter of setting. La Grande Bretêche is described as visible to the beholder as yet quite impersonal - from the top of the neighboring mountain, from which he can look down upon the enclosure and observe the estate at large. Then the point of view changes to a closer inspection on the street side, through one of the numerous holes made in the old gate by the children of the neighborhood. Almost immediately, however, vagueness and impersonality are cast aside, and, in his own person, Monsieur Horace, the narrator, takes the stage, and by night, "defying scratches, makes his way into the ownerless garden" and contemplates it at leisure, straying about the grounds and indulging in orgies of imaginary adventure. But he is soon visited at the inn by the notary, Monsieur Regnault, who forbids further trespass on the deserted premises. At this juncture, although the story is still related in the words of the original narrator, the point of view becomes that of the notary, who garrulously recounts his experiences in the château at the death-bed of the late owner, the Countess de Merret. With this change, the attitude of approach shifts over from one of setting, and interest centres in action. But Regnault's horizon, while narrower in extent than what has preceded, is but general, after all, and the narrator speedily seeks to supplement the notary's story by that of some one to whom more details are known. Such in