The expository opening was copied from Mr. Kipling by O. Henry and established by this writer as a fashion which is still continued by contributors to American magazines. But a popular expedient is not necessarily to be regarded as a permanent contribution to the methods of fiction; and Mr. Kipling, in his later stories, is a finer artist than Miss Edna Ferber or any other of the many imitators of O. Henry.
The Terminal Position.––But, in the structure of the short-story, the emphasis of the terminal position is an even more important matter. In this regard again Poe shows his artistry, in stopping at the very moment when he has attained completely his preëstablished design. His conclusions remain to this day unsurpassed in the sense they give of absolute finality. Hawthorne was far less firm in mastering the endings of his stories. His personal predilection for pointing a moral to adorn his tale led him frequently to append a passage of homiletic comment which was not bone of the bone and blood of the blood of the narrative itself. In the chapter on emphasis, we have already called attention to Guy de Maupassant’s device of periodic structure, by means of which the solution of the story is withheld till the concluding sentences. This exceedingly effective expedient, however, is applicable only in the sort of story wherein the element of surprise is inherent in the nature of the theme. In no other single feature of construction may the work of the inexperienced author be so readily detected as in the final passage of his story. Mr. Kipling’s “Lispeth” (the first of “Plain Tales from the Hills”), which was written at a very early age, began perfectly [the first word is “She”] and proceeded well; but when he approached his conclusion, the young author did not know where to stop. His story really ended at the words, “And she never came back”; for at that point his pre-established 194 design had been entirely effected. But instead of closing there, he appended four unnecessary paragraphs, dealing with the subsequent life of his heroine––all of which was, to use his own familiar phrase, “another story.” Poe and de Maupassant would not have made this mistake; and neither would Mr. Kipling after he had grown into mastery of artistic method. In one of the most celebrated stories of O. Henry, entitled “The Gift of the Magi”, the author made the technical mistake of appending a superfluous paragraph after his logical pattern had been completed.
Poe’s Analysis of “The Raven.”––In his very interesting paper on “The Philosophy of Composition,” Edgar Allan Poe outlined step by step the intellectual processes by which he developed the structure of “The Raven” and fashioned a finished poem from a preconceived effect. It is greatly to be regretted that he did not write a similar essay outlining in detail the successive stages in the construction of one of his short-stories. With his extraordinarily clear and analytic intellect, he fashioned his plots with mathematical precision. So rigorously did he work that in his best stories we feel that the removal of a sentence would be an amputation. He succeeded absolutely in giving his narrative the utmost emphasis with the greatest economy of means.
Analysis of “Ligeia.”––If we learn through and through how a single perfect story is constructed, we shall have gone far toward understanding the technic of story-building as a whole. Let us therefore analyze one of Poe’s short-stories––following in the main the method which he himself pursued in his analysis of “The Raven”––in order to learn the successive steps by which any excellent short-story may be developed from its theme. Let us choose “Ligeia” for the subject of this study, because it is very widely known, and because Poe himself considered 195 it the greatest of his tales. Let us see how, starting with the theme of the story, Poe developed step by step the structure of his finished fabric; and how, granted his preëstablished design, the progress of his plan was in every step inevitable.[8]
The theme of “Ligeia” was evidently suggested by those lines from Joseph Glanvill which, quoted as a motto for the story, are thrice repeated during the course of the narrative:––
“And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will, pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.”
Poe recognized, with the English moralist, that the human will is strong and can conquer many of the ills that flesh is heir to. If it were still stronger, it could do more mighty things; and if it were very much stronger, it is even conceivable that it might vanquish death, its last and sternest foe. Now it was legitimate for the purposes of fiction to imagine a character endowed with a will strong enough to conquer death; and a striking narrative effect could certainly be produced by setting forth this moral conquest. This, then, became the purpose of the story: to exhibit a character with a superhuman will, and to show how, by sheer force of volition, this person conquered death.
Having thus decided on his theme, the writer of the story was first forced to consider how many, or rather how few, characters were necessary to the narrative. One, at least, was obviously essential,––the person with the superhuman will. For esthetic reasons Poe made this 196 character a woman, and called her Ligeia; but it is evident that structurally the story would have been the same if he had made the character a man. The resultant narrative would have been different in mood and tone; but it would not have been different in structure. Given this central character, it was not perhaps evident at first that another person was needed for the tale. But in all stories which set forth an extraordinary being, it is necessary to introduce an ordinary character to serve as a standard by which the unusual capabilities of the central figure may be measured. Furthermore, in stories which treat of the miraculous, it is necessary to have at least one eye-witness to the extraordinary circumstances beside the person primarily concerned in them. Hence another character was absolutely needed in the tale. This second person, moreover, had to be intimately associated with the heroine, for the two reasons already considered. The most intimate relation imaginable was that of husband and wife; he must therefore be the husband of Ligeia. Beside these two people,––a woman of superhuman will, and her husband, a man of ordinary powers,––no other character was necessary; and therefore Poe did not (and could not, according to the laws of the short-story) introduce another. The Lady of Tremaine, as we shall see later on, is not, technically considered, a character.
The main outline of the story could now be plotted. Ligeia and her husband must be exhibited to the reader; and then, in her husband’s presence, Ligeia must conquer death by the vigor of her will. But in order to do this, she must first die. If she merely exerted her will to ward off the attacks of death, the reader would not be convinced that her recovery had been accomplished by other than ordinary means. She must die, therefore, and must afterwards resurrect herself by a powerful exertion of volition. The reader must be fully convinced that she 197 did really die; and therefore, before her resurrection, she must be laid for some time in the grave. The story, then, divided itself into two parts: the first, in which Ligeia was alive, terminated with her death; and the second, in which she was dead, ended with her resurrection.
Having thus arrived at the main outline of his plot, Poe was next forced to decide on the point of view from which the story should be told. Under the existing conditions, any one of three distinct points of view may have seemed, at the first glance, available: that of the chief character, that of the secondary character, and that of an external omniscient personality. But only a little consideration was necessary to show that only one of these three could successfully be employed. Obviously, the story could not be narrated by Ligeia: for it would be awkward to let an extraordinary woman discourse about her own unusual qualities; and furthermore, she could hardly narrate a story involving as one of its chief features her stay among the dead without being expected to tell the secrets of her prison-house. It was likewise impossible to tell the tale from the point of view of an external omniscient personality. In order that the final and miraculous incident might seem convincing, it had to be narrated not impersonally but personally, not externally but by an eye-witness. Therefore, the story must, of course, be told by the husband of Ligeia.