t of the other; but each series, as it
progresses, approaches nearer and nearer to the other, until they meet
and blend.
=Complication of the Network.=--A type of plot more elaborate than
this may be devised by leading up to the culmination along three or
more distinct lines of causation, instead of merely two. In the "Tale
of Two Cities," Sydney Carton's voluntary death upon the scaffold
stands at the apex of several series of events. And a plot may be
still further complicated by tying the strands together at other
points beside the culmination. In "The Merchant of Venice," the two
chief series of events are firmly knotted in the trial scene, when
Shylock is circumvented by Portia; but they are also tied together,
though less firmly, at the very outset of the play, when Antonio
borrows from Shylock the money which makes it possible for Bassanio to
woo and win the Lady of Belmont. Furthermore, any event in one of the
main strands of causation may stand at the culmination of a minor
strand, and thus may form a little knot in the general network of the
plot. In the same play, the minor strand of the elopement of Lorenzo
and Jessica attains its culmination in a scene which stands only
midway along the progress of the two main strands, that of the bond
and that of the caskets, toward their common result in the defeat of
Shylock.
=The Major Knot.=--But however intricately woven a plot may be, and
however many minor knots may tie together the various strands which
enter into it, there is almost always one point of greatest
complication, one big knot which ties together all the strands at
once, and stands as the common culmination of all the series, major
and minor. The story concerns itself chiefly with telling the reader
how the major knot came to be tied; but in a plot of any complexity,
the reader naturally desires to be told how the knot became untied
again. Therefore this point of greatest complication, this culmination
of all the strands of causation which are woven in the plot, this
objective point of the entire narrative, is seldom set at the very end
of a story, but usually at a point about three quarters of the way
from the beginning to the end. The first three quarters of the story,
speaking roughly, exhibit the antecedent causes of the major knot; and
the last quarter of the story exhibits its subsequent effects. A plot,
therefore, in its general aspects, may be figured as a complication
followed by an expli
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