Aspects of the Novel · Chapter
V: The Plot explained
Forster defines the plot as the novel's logical, intellectual aspect, emphasizing causality over mere time-sequence.
What happens
Forster defines the plot as the novel's logical, intellectual aspect, emphasizing causality over mere time-sequence. He contrasts plot with story, explores the tension between character interiority and plot demands, and uses André Gide's 'Les Faux Monnayeurs' as a case study of a novel that challenges traditional plot structure by mixing reality and art, including a central discussion about truth in life versus truth in fiction.
Themes in this chapter
The Nature of Storytelling
Forster distinguishes story (time-sequence) from plot (causality), and explores how plot shapes narrative logic.
Character and Human Nature
Discusses the tension between characters' secret inner lives and the plot's demand for action, arguing the novel's special access to subconscious.
Art, Pattern, and Rhythm
Examines the craft of plotting, including Gide's attempt to create a novel that mixes reality and art, and the struggle between facts and ideal reality.
Characters to notice
- André Gide
Author of 'Les Faux Monnayeurs', discussed as a novelist who experiments with plot by including his own diary and a novelist character (Edouard) within the novel.
- Edouard
Novelist character in Gide's work, who keeps a diary and argues for a novel without a subject, aiming to combine truth in life and truth in art.
- Aristotle
Quoted on character and action; Forster disagrees with his view that happiness and misery take the form of action, arguing the novel accesses secret life.
- Bernard
Secretary to Edouard in 'Les Faux Monnayeurs', who challenges Edouard's approach and produces a false coin as a concrete example of reality.
- Homo Fictus
Implied as the fictional character type that resists plot demands, preferring to brood and explore inner life rather than contribute to plot.
Key passages
“The plot, then, is the novel in its logical intellectual aspect: it requires mystery, but the mysteries are solved later on: the reader may be moving about in worlds unrealized, but the novelist has no misgivings.”
The plot represents the novel's logical and intellectual framework, relying on mystery that is eventually resolved; while the reader may feel uncertain, the author remains in control.
Forster defines the plot as the causal, intellectual structure of the novel, contrasting it with the story's mere time-sequence.
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. 'The king died'”
A story is events in chronological order; a plot is events connected by cause and effect, as in 'The king died and then the queen died of grief.'
Forster's classic distinction between story and plot, emphasizing causality as the key differentiator.
“The speciality of the novel is that the writer can talk about his characters as well as through them or can arrange for us to listen when they talk to themselves. He has access to self-communings, and from that level he can descend even deeper and peer into the subconscious.”
The novel's unique strength is the author's ability to reveal characters' inner thoughts and subconscious, beyond what drama can show through action alone.
Forster argues the novel's access to secret life distinguishes it from drama, where action is paramount.