Details. The clip-clop of Ambrose’s walk is a good example of the sound effects which increase the dramaturgic quality. Point out other instances. The lamp in Ambrose’s home, “torch of flame and blackened stream of smoke,” is illustrative of the color contribution. Give other examples. But, in this story, greater in value than either sound or color is the sense of motion. Mr. O’Brien calls attention to the “rhythmical progression” of the narrative. To this suggestion, add your own interpretation of the movement. Is there in the idea of the search for happiness a connotation of something never achieved, never-ended? and with the search a constant necessity for “Going—going—going”?
How does the story affect you emotionally? With regard to individual moments, how does the behavior of the liquor dealer move you? Is “contempt” the feeling you have for him, or is it stronger? What is your predominant feeling for Ambrose? Sympathy is incited through a combination of human relationships: 1. Pearl’s love for her father; 2. Sybil Clarke’s love for Pearl, and 3. her pity for Ambrose, her husband. What reaction is aroused by the incident wherein Pearl and David figure?
Author’s Comment. “Is ‘The Sun Chaser’ any longer than some of Stevenson’s short stories, or Balzac’s or Guy de Maupassant’s?... And what is a short story, anyhow? Isn’t the range of narrative the question involved in a short story? In a play I can tell from the ‘feel’ of the material whether it is a one-acter or full dress length. Isn’t there a suggestion of the epic tendency in the novelettes as well as the novel:—the incidental use of incident, for example, contributing to the sense of mass? This is the sort of tendency one may not admit to short story or play where concentration is so much greater. As I see it, now that it is done, ‘The Sun Chaser’ structurally as well as spiritually is marked by extreme concentration, and for that reason, personally, it would seem to me to be a short story.... The short story appeals to me from the technical point of view because it is more perfect than the novel, even as I consider the play to be more perfect structurally than the short story. I believe in concrete foundations and steel superstructures, and these, I think, can be built for the play, but not for the short story any more than for the poem.... It seems to me that the well-equipped artist always has a feeling for structure. Analysis, however, does not precede creation. Because of the nature of the creative artist’s mind, it does not necessarily follow creation, either. There may be actual inability to analyze. It’s as difficult to see the sum total of the work you’ve done as to see the sum total of yourself. The creative artist is not an analytical chemist of his own mental processes.... I have no standards.... I think that the thing which ‘arrives’ in short story or play is, like beauty, ‘its own excuse for being.’”—Jeannette Marks.
THE STORY VINTON HEARD AT MALLORIE
In this work Miss Moseley has presented a story of the war, a narrative of the supernatural having points in common with Mr. Rhodes’s “Extra Men.” In each, there is the spirit-world visitor, in each the truth conveyed by him which gives the story its thematic character, and in each the living power of the dead made manifest. As I have pointed out in “Representative Ghosts” (The Bookman, August, 1917), and elsewhere, mankind will be interested in ghosts so long as earth endures. The most decided impetus to fiction given by the war has been, so far, in the direction of the supernatural. It is interesting to know that Mr. O’Brien considers this and Frances Gilchrist Wood’s “The White Battalion” the two most enduring legends contributed this year to the supernatural literature of the war.
Plot.
Initial Incident: Young Mallorie is killed in action.
Steps toward the Climax: His body is taken home to Mallorie Abbey, where masses are held over it. A Zeppelin appears, ready to discharge bombs just over the chapel, when an aeroplane swoops noiselessly down; the Zeppelin falls. The Germans are all killed. The aeronaut descends. He accepts the invitation to stay awhile at Mallorie Abbey and remains almost a week. Lieutenant Templar, as he calls himself, occupies dead young Mallorie’s room and wears his clothes. He plays tennis and behaves in general like a normal healthy young Englishman, but that he has unusual powers is evinced by the words of the visiting general officer, “How does he know?”
The Climax: Lady Maurya’s questions of the aeronaut terminate in the answer, “Because in me is the strength,” etc., revealing his supernatural character. He disappears.