FICTION:FROM ANALYSIS

TO COMPOSITION

AP English 4

LITERARY ELEMENTS IN FICTION

• Plot

• Character

• Setting

• Point of View

• Symbol

• Theme

Elements of fiction work together to produce meaning:

PLOT: FROM WHAT TO WHY

• Authors arrange conflicts, complications,

and resolutions within a narrative to help

readers understand what is happening

and why.

• Conventional plot structure was originally

used to describe Greek and

Shakespearean plays.

CONVENTIONAL NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

exposition denoument

climax

inciting

incident

resolution

turning point

Background info:

characters, setting,

situation, nature of conflict.

The conflict and

complications build for

the main character.

Plot suspense or emotional tension peaks.

Protagonist’s fortunes improve (comedy) or worsen

(tragedy).

Result of the climax

where the conflict gets

resolved

Conflict has been

resolved, and balance is

restored. Traditionally

used to tell “the moral of

the story.”

MODERN NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

• Frequently deviates from conventional or

chronological structure.

• In Medias Res – when a story begins in the middle of the

action

• Foreshadowing – hint at things going to happen

• Flashbacks – describe events that have already occurred.

• No denouement included

• Questions to ask yourself:

• Is the plot arranged in chronological order?

• If the author deviates, what is the purpose of this/these

technique(s)? Increasing suspense? Leaving the ending

open to interpretation? Creating mood?

CHARACTERS AND MEANING

• Writers use characters to move along narrative and

meaning, how they describe them depends on the

author’s style and intentions. They may use direct

or indirect characterization.

• Round or dynamic characters – change

throughout the story and exhibit a range of

characteristics and emotions. May be gradual

change or experience an epiphany.

• Flat or static characters – generally minor

characters with one or two traits. Common

types: foils, or stock characters.

• In plays, characters are often revealed through

dialogue.

CHARACTERS: QUESTIONS TO ASK

• How do the characters change?

• What is their function?

• Do they see themselves differently from

how the readers see them?

• How do other characters see them and

do their perspectives change? Are their

perspectives correct? What is the

author’s intent? Is there dramatic irony?

WRITING PRACTICE

Nineteenth-century English novelist Charles

Dickens opens his novel Hard Times with a

description of the central character, Mr.

Gradgrind. Even before his rather appropriate

name is revealed, Dickens makes sure the

reader understands what Mr. Gradgrind is like.

Discuss the direct and indirect methods used to

characterize him in the following passage.

HARD TIMES EXCERPTIn the first paragraph, Dickens narrator reveals his

central character directly by what he says. Gradgrind’s

tone is confident, authoritative, perhaps obstinate and

arrogant. He is clearly a man who “knows best”; in fact,

he knows the “only” way to form young minds. Dickens

provides direct description in paragraph two. The

“square wall of a forehead” and “two dark caves” for his

eyes both suggest a Neanderthal-like being. Moreover,

the description of Gradgrind’s hair presents him as quite

ridiculous looking, as an object of ridicule. Another

method at work here is carefully chosen diction.

“Monotonous,” “inflexible,” “dictatorial,” “obstinate,”

“unaccommodating,” and “stubborn” all directly

contribute to the characterization; they “all helped the

emphasis,” in the words of the narrator.

HARD TIMES EXCERPT (CONT.)

The second paragraph includes rich imagery that

indirectly characterizes Gradgrind. The “plain, bare,

monotonous vault of (the) school-room” echoes the

unimaginative and monotonous vault of his mind. The

repetition of “emphasis” – it occurs five times in as many

sentences – certainly emphasizes the importance of the

imagery. The author also repeats “square,” hardly a

flattering adjective. Dickens continues to characterize

Gradgrind indirectly at the end of the excerpt, where the

“inclined plane of little vessels” shows the pupils as

Gradgrind views them both literally and figuratively, and

a careful reader can hardly miss the humorous irony of

the “imperial” gallons of facts this imperious figure would

like to pour.

SETTING

• Pay attention to the details – the sights and

sounds, textures and tones, colors and

shapes.

• In a play setting is different than in a novel

or short story because there is a physical

set to consider. In modern plays we usually

find explicit information about the setting

(unlike Shakespeare).

SETTING: HISTORICAL CONTEXT

• A novel, short story, or play may be set in a

historical era – a time and place that has its

own political, economic, or social upheavals.

• Some cases the historical context goes

unstated

• In other cases it is not implicit but explicit

with dates and places clearly identified

SETTING – QUESTIONS TO ASK

• Pay attention to the details – sights, sounds,

textures, tones, colors, shapes. What does the

author include and omit and why? Why is the

setting important?

• Is there an historical context? Is it explicit or

implicit?

• Does it establish the cultural environment? The

manners, customs, morals, rituals, and codes of

conduct. Is it realistic or invented (such as

dystopian or utopian)?

• Does the setting help create atmosphere or

mood, or relate to themes?

WRITING PRACTICE

• Read the excerpt from Steinbeck’s Grapes

of Wrath. Then in a well-developed

paragraph discuss what the setting reveals

about the novel.

GRAPES OF WRATH EXCERPT

We get a good sense of the physical setting. The first

paragraph, one long sentence that rambles along like the

road itself, describes Highway 66 – it goes from

Mississippi to Bakersfield, California – and sets a mood

with the sensory images of the “long concrete path.” In

the second paragraph, the narrator introduces the

people who follow this road in the hope of finding

something better than the desolation of the drought that

has worsened their economic hardship. The word flight

appears three times, so we get a clear sense of

movement from one thing to another, though what that

thing is, we’re not sure. The third paragraph consist

almost entirely of names and places along Highway 66.

Even if we do not know these towns, we still get a clear

sense of movement, of going from one stop to the next.

GRAPES OF WRATH (CONT.)

What is unstated is the reason for the migration, though

it is implied when the narrator describes the migrating

families as “refugees from dust and shrinking land.”

This passage refers to the great migration of families to

California as a result of the Dust Bowl, a historic drought

combined with severe storms that destroyed much of the

farmland in middle America during the Great

Depression of the 1930s. This historical setting, not just

Route 66 but the context of the Dust Bowl and the Great

Depression, makes the story of the Joad family

emblematic of an entire era in American history.

WRITING PRACTICE

Read the opening stage directions Lorrain

Hansberry wrote for her play “A Raisin in

the Sun.” What is the connection between

setting and the characters? How does this

opening section suggest ideas likely to be

explored during the course of the play?

RAISIN IN THE SUN EXCERPT

The connection between the setting and the characters

is so strong in this play that the reader can nearly read

the first sentence as if it said, “The Youngers would be a

comfortable and well-ordered family if it were not for a

number of indestructible contradictions to this state of

being,” One of those contradictions is the tight quarters

where Mama; her daughter, Beneatha; her son, Walter:

Walter’s wife, Ruth; and their son, Travis, are crowded

together. The furnishings “are tired,” as are the

characters. The distant echoes of care and love that the

rented apartment hears are akin to the same echoes the

reader will hear among the family. Things have changed,

and not for the better.

RAISIN IN THE SUN EXCERPT (CONT.)

Struggle emerges as a major theme in a play

where the stage directions present a couch whose

upholstery “has to fight to show itself,” a carpet

that “has fought back” from attempts to hide its

wear, and light that “fights its way through (a)

little window” of the room where “weariness

has…won.” But the situation is not hopeless. Ruth

enters, weary as the furnishings, as the light

comes in – through “feebly” – and young Travis is

awakened with a “rousing shake.”