Composition-Rhetoric

by Stratton D. Brooks; Marietta Hubbard

EXERCISES

1. Name four different events that have actually taken place in your school in which you think your classmates are interested.

2. Name three events that have taken place in other schools that may be of interest to members of your school.

3. Name four events of general interest that have occurred in your city during the last two or three years.

4. From a daily paper, pick out a narrative that is interesting to you.

5. Select one that you think ought to interest the most of your classmates.

6. Name three national events of recent occurrence.

7. Name three or four strange or mysterious events of which you have heard.

8. Name an actual occurrence that interested you because you wanted to see how it turned out.

9. Would an ordinary account of a bicycle or automobile trip be interesting? If not, why not?

+Theme LXX.+—.Write a letter to a pupil in a neighboring high school, telling about something interesting that has happened in your own school.

(Review forms of letter writing. Consider your use of paragraphs.)

+142. Plot.+—By plot we mean the outline of the story told in a few words. All narratives consist of accounts of connected happenings, in which action on the part of the characters is naturally implied. The principal action briefly told constitutes the plot. The simple plot of Tennyson's Princess is as follows:—

A prince of the North, after being affianced as a child to a princess of the South, has fallen in love with her portrait and a lock of her hair. When, however, the embassy appears to fetch home the bride, she sends back the message that she is not disposed to be married. Upon receipt of this word the Prince and two friends, Florian and Cyril, steal away to seek the Princess, and learn on reaching her father's court that she has established a Woman's College on a distant estate. Having got letters authorizing them to visit the Princess, they ride into her domain, where they determine to go dressed like girls and apply for admission as students in the College. They arrive in disguise, and are admitted. On the first day the young men enroll themselves as students of Lady Psyche, who recognizes Florian as her brother and agrees not to expose them, since—by a law of the College inscribed above the gates, which darkness has kept them from seeing—the penalty of their discovery would be death. Melissa, a student, overhears them, and is bound over to keep the secret. Lady Blanche, mother of Melissa and rival to Lady Psyche, also learns of the alarming invasion, and remains silent for sinister reasons of her own. On the second day the principal personages picnic in a wood. At dinner Cyril sings a song that is better fit for the smoking room than for the ears of ladies; the Prince, in his anger, betrays his sex by a too masculine reproof; and dire confusion is the result. The Princess in her flight falls into the river, from which she is rescued by the Prince. Cyril and Lady Psyche escape together, but the Prince and Florian are brought before the Princess. At this important moment despatches are brought from her father saying that the Prince's father has surrounded her palace with soldiers, taken him prisoner, and holds him as a hostage. The Prince, after pleading to deaf ears, is sent away at dawn with Florian, and goes with him to the camp. Meantime during the night, the Princess's three brothers have come to her aid with an army. An agreement is reached to decide the case and end the war by a tournament between the brothers, with fifty men, on one side; the Prince and his two friends, with fifty men, on the other. This happens on the third day. The Prince and his men are vanquished, and he himself is badly wounded.

But the Princess is now gradually to discover that she has "overthrown more than her enemy,"—that she has defeated yet saved herself. She has said of Lady Psyche's little child:—

"I took it for an hour in mine own bed
This morning: there the tender orphan hands
Felt at my heart, and seem'd to charm from thence
The wrath I nursed against the world."

When Cyril pleads with her to give the child back to its mother, she kisses it and feels that "her heart is barren." When she passes near the wounded Prince, and is shown by his father—his beard wet with his son's blood—her hair and picture on her lover's heart,

Her iron will was broken in her mind,
Her noble heart was broken in her breast.

From the Princess's cry then, "Grant me your son to nurse," it is but a natural result that she should bring the Prince's wounded men with him into the College, now a hospital. Through ministering to her lover, she comes to love him; and theories yield to "the lord of all."

—Copeland-Rideout: Introduction to Tennyson's Princess.

+Theme LXXI.+—Write the plot of one of the following:—

1. Lochinvar, Scott. 2. Rip Van Winkle, Irving. 3. One story from A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens. 4. Silas Marner, George Eliot. 5. The last magazine story you have read. 6. Some story assigned by the teacher.

+Theme LXXII.+—Write three brief plots. Have the class choose the one that will make the most interesting story.

+Theme LXXIII.+—Write a story, using the plot selected by the class in the preceding theme.

(Are the events related in your story probable or improbable?)

+143. The Introduction.+—Our pleasure in a story depends upon our clear understanding of the various situations, and this understanding may often be best given by an introduction that states something of the time, place, characters, and circumstances as shown in Section 6. The purpose of the introduction is to make the story more effective, and what it shall contain is determined by the needs of the story itself. The last half of a well-written story will not be interesting to one who has not read the first half, because the first half will contain much that is essential to the complete understanding of the main point of the story. A story begun with conversation at once arouses interest, but care must be taken to see that the reader gets sufficient descriptive and explanatory matter to enable him to understand the story as the plot develops, or the interest will begin to lag.

+Theme LXXIV.+—Write a narrative.

Suggested subjects:— 1. The Christmas surprise. 2. How the mortgage was paid. 3. The race between the steam roller and the traction engine. 4. The new girl in the boarding school. 5. The Boss, and how he won his title.

(Be sure that your introduction is such that the entire situation is understood. Name different points in the story that led you to say what you have in the introduction. Have you mentioned any unnecessary points?)

+144. The Incentive Moment.+—The chief business of a story-teller is to arouse the interest of his readers, and the sooner he succeeds, the better. Usually he tries to arouse interest from the very beginning of his story. He therefore places in the introduction or near it a statement designed to stimulate the curiosity of his readers. The point at which interest begins has been termed the incentive moment. In the following selection notice that the first sentence tells who, when, and where. (Section 6.) The second sentence causes us to ask, what was it? and by the time that is answered we are curious to know what happened and how the adventure ended.

On a mellow moonlight evening a cyclist was riding along a lonely road in the northern part of Mashonaland. As he rode, enjoying the somber beauty of the African evening, he suddenly became conscious of a soft, stealthy, heavy tread on the road behind him. It seemed like the jog trot of some heavy, cushion-footed animal following him. Turning round, he was scared very badly to find himself looking into the glaring eyes of a large lion. The puzzled animal acted very strangely, now raising his head, now lowering it, and all the time sniffling the air in a most perplexed manner. Here was a surprise for the lion. He could not make out what kind of animal it was that could roll, walk, and sit still all at the same time; an animal with a red eye on each side, and a brighter one in front. He hesitated to pounce upon such an outlandish being—a being whose blood smelled so oily.

I believe no cyclist ever "scorched" with more honesty and single-mindedness of purpose. But although he pedaled and pedaled, although he perspired and panted, his effort to get away did not seem to place any more space between him and the lion; the animal kept up his annoyingly calm jog trot, and never seemed to tire.

The poor rider was finally so exhausted from terror and exertion that he decided to have the matter settled right away. Suddenly slowing down, he jumped from his wheel, and, facing abruptly about, thrust the brilliant headlight full into the face of the lion. This was too much for the beast. The sudden glare destroyed the lion's nerve, for at this fresh evidence of mystery on the part of the strange rider-animal, who broke himself into halves and then cast his big eye in any direction he pleased, the monarch of the forest turned tail, and with a wild rush retreated in a very hyena-like manner into the jungle, evidently thanking his stars for his miraculous escape from that awful being. Thereupon the bicyclist, with new strength returning and devoutly blessing his acetylene lamp, pedaled his way back to civilization.

—P.L. Wessels.

+Theme LXXV.+—Write a short imaginative story.

Suggested subjects:— 1. A bicycle race with an unfriendly dog. 2. An unpleasant experience. 3. A story told by the school clock. 4. Disturbing a hornet's nest. 5. The fate of an Easter bonnet. 6. Chased by a wolf.

(Where is the incentive moment? Is it introduced naturally?)

+145. Climax.+—You have already noticed in your reading that usually somewhere near the close of the story, there is a turning point. That turning point is called the climax. At this point, the suspense of mind is greatest, for the fate of the principal character is being decided. If the story is well written as regards the plot, our interest will continually increase from the incentive moment to the climax.

In the novel and the drama, both of which may have a complicated plot, several minor climaxes or crises may be found. There may be a crisis to each single event or episode, yet they should all be a part of and lead up to the principal or final climax. Instead of detracting from, they add to the interest of a carefully woven plot. For example, in the Merchant of Venice, we have a crisis in both the casket story and the Lorenzo and Jessica episode; but so skillfully are the stories interwoven that the minor climaxes do not lessen our interest in the principal one.

In short stories, the turning point should come near the close. There should be but little said after that point is reached. In novels, and especially in dramas, we find that the climax is not right at the close, and considerable action sometimes takes place after the climax has been reached.