Faculty of Philosophy

English Department
Introduction to the Anglophone Literary Theory
Professor: Radoje Šoškić, PhD

Lecture 3c – Week 4
Thinking Theoretically – Plot, characters, point
of view, setting

a) PLOT

Plot is the logical interaction of the various

thematic elements of a text which lead to a change of
the original situation as presented at the outset of
the narrative. An ideal traditional plot line
encompasses the following four sequential levels:

Exposition — complication — climax or turning

point — resolution

The exposition or presentation of the initial situation

is disturbed by a complication or conflict which
produces suspense and eventually leads to a climax,
crisis, or turning point. The climax is followed by a
resolution of the complication (French denouement),
with which the text usually ends. Most traditional
fiction, drama, and film employ this basic plot
structure, which is also called linear plot since its
different elements follow a chronological order.
In many cases—even in linear plots—flashback and
foreshadowing introduce information concerning the past
or future into the narrative. The opening scene in
Billy Wilder’s (1906–2002) Sunset Boulevard (1950) is a
famous example of the foreshadowing effect in film: the
first-person narrator posthumously relates the events
that lead to his death while drifting dead in a
swimming pool.
The drama of the absurd and the experimental novel
deliberately break with linear narrative structures
while at the same time maintaining traditional elements
of plot in modified ways. Many contemporary novels
alter linear narrative structures by introducing
elements of plot in an unorthodox sequence. Kurt
Vonnegut’s (1922–) postmodern novel Slaughterhouse-Five
(1969) is a striking example of experimental plot
structure which mixes various levels of action and
time, such as the experiences of a young soldier in
World War II, his life in America after the war, and a
science-fiction-like dream world in which the
protagonist is kidnapped by an extraterrestrial force.

b) CHARACTERS

While formalist approaches to the study of literature

traditionally focus on plot and narrative structure,
methods informed by psychoanalysis shift the center
of attention to the text’s characters. A
psychological approach is, however, merely one way of
evaluating characters; it is also possible to analyze
character presentation in the context of
narratological structures. Generally speaking,
characters in a text can be rendered either as types
 or as individuals. A typified character in literature
is dominated by one specific trait and is referred to
as a flat character. The term round character usually
denotes a persona with more complex and
differentiated features.
Typified characters often represent the general
traits of a group of persons or abstract ideas.
Medieval allegorical depictions of characters preferred
typification in order to personify vices, virtues, or
philosophical and religious positions. The Everyman
figure, a symbol of the sinful Christian, is a major
example of this general pattern in the representation
of man in medieval literature. In today’s
advertisements, typified character presentations re-
emerge in magazines, posters, film, and TV.

The individualization of a character, however, has

evolved into a main feature of the genre of the novel.
Many modern fictional texts reflect a tension between
these modes of representation by introducing both
elements simultaneously. Herman Melville’s (1819–91)
novel Moby Dick (1851), for instance, combines
allegorical and individualistic elements in the
depiction of its main character in order to lend a
universal dimension to the action which, despite being
grounded in the particularities of a round figure,
nevertheless points beyond the specific individual.
Both typified and individualized characters can be
rendered in a text through showing and telling as two
different modes of presentation. The explanatory
characterization, or telling, describes a person
through a narrator.
Dramatic characterization, or showing, does away with
the position of an obvious narrator, thus avoiding any
overt influence on the reader by a narrative mediator.
This method of presentation creates the impression on
the reader that he or she is able to perceive the
acting figures without any intervening agency, as if
witnessing a dramatic performance. The image of a
person is “shown” solely through his or her actions and
utterances without interfering commentary, thereby
suggesting an “objective” perception which leaves
interpretation and evaluation solely to the judgment of
the reader. Ernest Hemingway’s (1899–1961) texts are
among the most famous for this technique, which aims at
an “objective” effect by means of a drama-like
presentation.
As shown above, one can distinguish between two basic
kinds of characters (round or flat), as well as between
two general modes of presentation (showing or telling):

Kinds of characters
typified character individualized
character
flat round

Modes of presentation
explanatory method dramatic method
narration dialogue—
monologue

c) POINT OF VIEW

The term point of view, or narrative perspective,

characterizes the way in which a text presents persons,
events, and settings. The subtleties of narrative
perspectives developed parallel to the emergence of the
novel and can be reduced to three basic positions: the
action of a text is either mediated through an
exterior, unspecified narrator (omniscient point of
view), through a person involved in the action (first-
person narration), or presented without additional
commentary (figural narrative situation).
The most common manifestations of narrative
perspectives in prose fiction can, therefore, be
structured according to the following pattern:
- omniscient point of view
through external narrator who refers to protagonist
in the third person

- first-person narration
by protagonist or by minor character

- figural narrative situation

through figures acting in the text

Texts with an omniscient point of view refer to the

acting figures in the third person and present the
action from an all-knowing, God-like perspective.
First-person narration renders the action as seen
through a participating figure, who refers to her- or
himself in the first person. First-person narrations
can adopt the point of view either of the protagonist
or of a minor figure. The majority of novels in first-
person narration use, of course, the protagonist (main
character) as narrator, as for example, Laurence
Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759– 67) or Charles Dickens’
David Copperfield (1849–50). The opening lines of J.D.
Salinger’s (1919–) The Catcher in the Rye (1951) also
refer to this tradition of first-person narration by
the protagonist: “If you really want to hear about it,
the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I
was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how
my parents were occupied and all before they had me,
and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I
don’t feel like going into it.”
In the figural narrative situation, the narrator
moves into the background, suggesting that the plot is
revealed solely through the actions of the characters
in the text. This literary technique is a relatively
recent phenomenon, one which has been developed with
the rise of the modern novel, mostly in order to
encourage the reader to judge the action without an
intervening commentator. The following example from
James Joyce’s (1882–1941) A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man (1916) renders the action through the figural
perspective of the protagonist.
If a text shifts the emphasis from exterior aspects
of the plot to the inner world of a character, its
narrative technique is usually referred to as stream-of
consciousness technique.Related narratological
phenomena are interior monologue and free indirect
discourse. The narrator disappears, leaving the
thoughts and psychic reactions of a participating
figure as the sole mediators of the action. Influenced
by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, these techniques
found their way into modernist prose fiction after
World War I. Based on associations in the subconscious
of a fictitious persona, it reflects a groundbreaking
shift in cultural paradigms during the first decades of
the twentieth century, when literature, under the
influence of psychoanalysis and related sciences,
shifted its main focus from the sociologically
descriptive goals of the nineteenth century to psychic
phenomena of the individual. James Joyce is considered
the inventor of this technique, best exemplified by the
final section of his novel Ulysses
(1922), which strings together mental associations of
the character Molly Bloom. A famous example in American
literature is William Faulkner’s (1897–1962) renderings
of impressions and events through the inner perspective
of a mentally handicapped character in The Sound and
the Fury (1929).

d) SETTING

Setting is another aspect traditionally included in

analyses of prose fiction, and it is relevant to
discussions of other genres, too. The term ‘g’
“setting” denotes the location, historical period,
and social surroundings in which the action of a text
develops. In James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), for
example, the setting is clearly defined as Dublin, 16
June 1904. In other cases, for example William
Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Hamlet (c. 1601), all we
know is that the action takes place in medieval
Denmark. Authors hardly ever choose a setting for its
own sake, but rather embed a story in a particular
context of time and place in order to support action,
characters, and narrative perspective on an
additional level.
In the gothic novel and certain other forms of
prose fiction, setting is one of the crucial elements
of the genre as such. In the opening section of “The
Fall of the House of Usher” (1840), Edgar Allan Poe
(1809–49) gives a detailed description of the
building in which the uncanny short story will
evolve. Interestingly, Poe’s setting, the House of
Usher, indirectly resembles Roderick Usher, the main
character of the narrative and lord of the house.