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of information in just a few words.
C. Summary also helps to activate our senses.
D. It is not easy to replace summary with scene.
E. When watching a scene, we are often left to our own devices.
III. Look now about a third of the way into the chapter.
A. This is where the tension builds quickly. The conversation in the tent turns to the subject of marriage, and
the narrator begins to give us some longer speeches from the man, whose name is Michael.
B. There is a lull in the action.
1. You will get more out of a scene if you begin to break it down into stages, or beats.
2. Those divisions give you a chance to stop and think about the characters actions.
3. You also get a sense of how the narrator and author are building tension.
C. During the pause, Michael talks about auctioning off his wife.
1. No one wants a summary at this point.
2. The drama of this moment is largely a product of its placement in the chapter.
3. The power is enhanced because these are some of the characters first words.
D. There is another brief pause before Michael invites the other guys to go right ahead.
E. Michael insists that it is not a joke, and there is another pause.
1. We don t generally think of pauses as part of a scene.
2. Here we need a summary this pause lasts for 15 minutes.
F. Michael brings it up again! The woman says that she wishes someone would make him an offer!
1. With the exception of a few speech tags, it is almost all dialogue.
2. From this point on, the pace never slackens; there are no more pauses.
G. A sailor has agreed to pay for Michael s wife; when the wife bids him good-bye, the scene is finished.
©2009 The Teaching Company. 29
H. The narrator does not break for a new chapter at this point.
1. He goes back into summary.
2. Then another quick scene.
3. Then one last speech from Michael.
4. Finally, there is a paragraph of summary.
IV. Disgrace begins in Cape Town where the central character, David Lurie, is a university professor.
A. The first chapter is largely devoted to summary.
B. The second chapter is where we find our first big scene.
V. In the second chapter, we see Coetzee adopting and adapting Hardy s techniques.
A. The chapter begins with David and his student, Melanie Isaacs.
1. Eventually, he asks her to sleep with him.
2. As we move through this scene, we have a pretty good sense of what David is up to.
3. What we do not know is when and how he will go about it.
B. Once we get to David s apartment, we see the scene unfold in four stages.
1. The first stage begins with a bit of summary, and we learn about his second thoughts through free
indirect discourse.
2. Stage 2 is very brief, and he backs off a bit.
3. Stage 3 unfolds as they are eating supper and she asks the questions.
4. In stage 4, he works to prolong the encounter and asks her to spend the night.
C. Through all of these stages, we have gotten little bits of summary from the narrator.
1. Occasionally, the narrator provides stage directions, because body language is a crucial guide to what
the characters may be thinking and feeling.
2. Summary is an important part of this episode.
3. As he moves through these stages, the narrator also continues to make use of free indirect discourse.
4. A further observation is that the narrator offers us little insight into Melanie s feelings.
VI. Through both Disgrace and in The Mayor of Casterbridge, we watch as a man digs his own grave.
A. Questions about why this happens are forced on us by the scenes in both.
B. The power of those questions has a good deal to do with the layout and design of key chapters and, more
specifically, with the authors masterful use of both summary and scene.
C. In your future reading, I would encourage you not only to look for big scenes, but also to think about how
each of those scenes is constructed.
Suggested Reading:
Bentley, Some Observations on the Art of Narrative, chaps. 3 5.
Lodge, Mimesis and Diegesis in Modern Fiction.
Questions to Consider:
1. How would you account for the prejudice against summary? Are there any good reasons for it?
2. What about the prejudice in favor of scenes? What do readers tend to like about scenes, and why should a writer
not indulge our taste for them?
30 ©2009 The Teaching Company.
Lecture Fifteen
Subtexts, Motives, and Secrets
Scope: Having considered the distinctive roles of scene and summary in the construction of fictional narratives, we
are ready to consider the shaping or making of individual scenes. How does a scene get going, and how
does tension or excitement build throughout the course of a great scene? How can we tell what is really at
stake for the characters involved in the scene, and what should we have learned about the characters and
their relationship by the time a scene is over? In working toward the answers to such questions, we will
return to the scenes from Thomas Hardy and J. M. Coetzee that we explored in our last lecture and try to
advance a few general claims about scenes by looking for ways of getting at the emotional subtext of a
scene. We will try to bring it all together by looking at Persuasion, by Jane Austen, the greatest maker of
scenes. Her efforts will show that in a well-crafted scene, the principal characters need not mention the real
subject of their conversation and do not even need to address one another at all!
Outline
I. A great scene can deepen our insight into the main characters.
II. We return to the scene from Disgrace where David Lurie tries to seduce his student, Melanie Isaacs.
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