William Kenney’s How to Analyze Fiction

PLOT
 Reveals events, not only in
their temporal, but also in
their causal relationships.
 An author’s selection and
arrangement of incidents in a
story to shape the action and
give the story a particular
focus.
 THE STRUCTURE OF PLOT
 Gustav Freytag (1816 - 1895), a German dramatist and
novelist proposes the structure of plot of the stories told
in ancient Greek and Shakespearean drama. This
analysis is known as Freytag's analysis. His analysis
consisted of dividing a play into FIVE parts:

1. exposition
2. rising action
3. climax
4. falling action
5. resolution/dénouement
 THE STRUCTURE OF PLOT
 BEGINNING
 EXPOSITION : early part of the story
which introduces the readers to the story’s
character and sometimes setting.
 ELEMENT OF INSTABILITY : the situation
with which the story begins contains within
it a hidden or overt element of instability.
 THE STRUCTURE OF PLOT
 THE MIDDLE
CONFLICT : elements tending towards
instability in the exposition group themselves
into what is recognized as a pattern of
CONFLICT.
COMPLICATION : the development (which
is latent) from the initial statement of conflict
to the climax.
CLIMAX
: when the complication attains its highest
point of intensity, from which point the
outcome of the story is inevitable.
: the moment of greatest emotional tension
in a narrative, usually marking a turning
point in the plot at which the rising action
reverses to become the falling action (for
better or worse)
: the final and most exciting event in a
series of events. In many stories, it is the
last sentence, with no successive falling
action or resolution.
 Falling action / anti-climax
 Sometimes, an anti-climax may occur, in
which an expectedly difficult event is
revealed to be incredibly easy or of small
importance. Critics may also label the
falling action as an anti-climax.
 THE STRUCTURE OF PLOT
 THE END
everything from the climax to the
DENOUEMENT (or resolution, or falling
action, or outcome of the story).

is characterized by diminishing tensions

and the resolution of the plot’s conflicts
and complications.
 THE LAWS OF THE PLOT
 PLAUSIBILITY
 Convincing on its own terms (true to itself)
 Not to be confused with realism (the demand that
the story be realistic)
 SURPRISE / TWIST
Readers want to be surprised, but the surprise
must not violate the basic law of plausibility.
 SUSPENSE
a good plot arouses suspense (an expectant
uncertainty as to the outcome of the story)
 THE LAWS OF THE PLOT
 UNITY IN PLOT
plot must have unity (has a true
beginning, middle, and end and follows
the laws of plausibility, surprise, and
suspense)
 CHARACTER
 SIMPLE (FLAT) CHARACTERS
the character is less the representation of a
human personality than the embodiment of a
single attitude or obsession in a character (e.g.
familiar or stereotyped character)
 A flat character embodies one or two qualities,
ideas, or traits that can be readily described in
a brief summary. They are not psychologically
complex characters and therefore are readily
accessible to readers. Some flat characters are
recognized as stock characters; they embody
stereotypes such as the "dumb blonde" or the
"mean stepfather." They become types rather
than individuals.
 CHARACTER
COMPLEX (ROUND) CHARACTERS
Readers can see all sides of the character
more lifelike: in life people are not simply
embodiments of a single character
more complex than flat or stock characters,
and often display the inconsistencies and
internal conflicts found in most real people.
They are more fully developed, and therefore
are harder to summarize.
 METHODS OF CHARACTER
PORTRAYAL
 DISCURSIVE (by telling):
 directly tells the readers about the
characters.
 May even express approval / disapproval
of them
 Advantage : simple and economical
 Disadvantage : mechanical and
discourages readers reader’s imaginative
participation.
 METHODS OF CHARACTER
PORTRAYAL
 DRAMATIC METHOD (by showing):
 The author allows the characters to reveal
themselves to the readers
 Advantage : more lifelike, encourages the
reader’s active participation in the story.
 Disadvantage : less economical, increases
the possibility of misjudgment.
 Characters in short stories are usually revealed
but do not develop. Characters in novels usually
develop through the passage of time.
 Characters can be convincing whether they are
presented by showing or by telling, as long as
their actions are motivated.
 MOTIVATION of the characters is the reason
why they do certain actions. Motivated action by
the characters occurs when the reader or
audience is offered reasons for how the
characters behave, what they say, and the
decisions they make. Plausible action is action
by a character in a story that seems reasonable,
given the motivations presented.
 SETTING
 The physical and social context in which the
action of a story occurs. Generally means a
point in time and space at which the events of
the plot occur.
 The major elements of setting are the time, the
place, and the social environment that frames
the characters.
 Setting can be used to evoke a mood or
atmosphere that will prepare the reader for what
is to come. Sometimes, writers choose a
particular setting because of traditional
associations with that setting that are closely
related to the action of a story. For example,
stories filled with adventure or romance often
take place in exotic locales.
 TYPES OF SETTING
 NEUTRAL SETTING : when the author
only sketches the setting (physical)
 SPIRITUAL SETTING : the values
embodied or implied in the physical setting
 DYNAMIC : when setting thrusts itself
dynamically into the action, affecting
events and being in turn affected by them.
 ELEMENTS OF SETTING
1. The actual geographical location
(including topography, scenery, the
details of a room’s interior)
2. The time in which the action takes place
(historical period, season of the year)
3. The occupation and modes of day-to-day
existence of the characters
4. The religious, moral, intellectual, social,
and emotional environment of the
character. (social environment)
 POINT OF VIEW
 FIRST PERSON NARRATOR (or
PARTICIPANT): a story is told by one of the
participants or characters in the story (uses the
personal pronoun “I”, is told from the inside). The
narrator may be the protagonist or any minor
character in the story.
 THIRD PERSON NARRATOR (or
NONPARTICIPANT): a story is told by a usually
nameless narrator who may be more or less
closely identified with the author. The narrator is
not a character in the tale
 THIRD-PERSON P.O.V.
 THE OMNISCIENT NARRATOR : the
story is told by Godlike narrator who knows
everything. The narrator can enter the
mind of any or all of the characters.
 Example: “Jones was inwardly angry but
gave no sign; Smith continued chatting, but
he sensed Jones’s anger.”
 SELECTIVE OMNISCIENT : the narrator
limits his omniscience to the minds of only
a few of the characters. Example 
“Eveline”
 THIRD-PERSON P.O.V.
 THE OMNISCIENT NARRATOR : the
story is told by Godlike narrator who
knows everything. The narrator can enter
the mind of any or all of the characters.
 Advantage : most natural and comfortable
(for authors) of all narrative techniques,
and highly flexible
 Disadvantage : less lifelike (unnatural in
the sense that in real life, there are no
omniscient people.
 POINT OF VIEW
 LIMITED NARRATOR : a narrator who
doesn’t know everything. It may embody in
a first person narrator or a third person
narrator.
 Unlike omniscient narrator who is not
personally involved in the story and thus
disinterestedly views the action from
above, a limited narrator may not be
trustworthy as he/she tries to give
accounts on the actions from his/her
understanding or interest.
 LIMITED NARRATOR
 The protagonist as the narrator  has the
advantage of immediacy and the sense of
life
 Minor character viewpoint  allows the
readers to see the facets of the situation
that readers would otherwise miss.
 Combination of the omniscient and the
limited narrator
 Multiple viewpoint  the readers see the
action from the point of view of many
characters in the story.
 STYLE
 A writer’s characteristic way of using language.
 A writer’s style can reveal to us his way of
perceiving experience and of organizing his
perceptions.
 Style consists of diction, imagery and syntax
 The distinctive and unique manner in which a
writer arranges words to achieve particular
effects. Style essentially combines the idea to be
expressed with the individuality of the author.
These arrangements include individual word
choices as well as matters such as the length of
sentences, their structure, tone, and use of
irony.
 DICTION
 DICTION : the author’s choice of words.

 We may undertake the same kind of

investigation of the diction in the total body
of a writer’s work, seeking to discover
what kind of choices the writer habitually
makes and for what reasons.
 IMAGERY
 Recurrent images : contribute to the total
design of a story if they recur frequently in
the story.
 By their frequent recurrence, the images
take on suggestive power, arousing
associations with some ideas which are
supposedly to be relevant to the story’s
meaning.
 SYNTAX
 The way in which the writer constructs
his/her sentences.
 Consider : length of sentences
: proportion of simple to
complex sentences

 E.g.: Henry James , Ernest Hemingway

 SYMBOL
 A symbol is a sign which has further
layers of meaning. In other words, a
symbol means more than it literally says.
(Signs are literal; symbols are not).
 Something that is itself and yet stands
for/suggests or means something else.
 An image that evokes an objective,
concrete reality and has that reality
suggest another level of meaning.
 SYMBOL
 Signifies a specific combination of attitude,
a sustained constancy of meaning, and
the potential for wide-ranging application.
 Consistently refers beyond itself to a
significant idea, emotion, or quality.
 Appears to be of major importance.
 A person, object, image, word, or event
that evokes a range of additional meaning
beyond and usually more abstract than its
literal significance.
 TONE
 Expression of attitudes.
 In written language, it is the quality of style, that
reveals the attitudes of the author toward his
subject and toward his audience.
 The author’s implicit attitude toward the reader
or the people, places, and events in a work as
revealed by the elements of the author’s style.
Tone may be characterized as serious or ironic,
sad or happy, private or public, angry or
affectionate, bitter or nostalgic, or any other
attitudes and feelings that human beings
experience.
 THEME
 The meaning of the story.
 Theme is the central and unifying concept of the
story.
 The central meaning or dominant idea in a literary
work. A theme provides a unifying point around
which the plot, characters, setting, point of view,
symbols, and other elements of a work are
organized.
 It is important not to mistake the theme for the actual
subject of the work; the theme refers to the abstract
concept that is made concrete through the images,
characterization, and action of the text.
 There is no one way of stating the theme of a story.
 Theme must be expressible in the
form of a statement with a subject and
a predicate.
 The theme must be stated as a
generalization about life.
 Be careful not to make the
generalization larger than is justified
by the terms of the story.