on character-driven novels (sendai, june21, 2014)

Plot-driven Novels vs. Character-

driven Novels IIJune 21, 2014 at Tohoku University

M. “Bobby” Takahashi & Stephen A. Shucart

Akita Prefectural University

Plot-driven Novels

The hero fights against the enemy that is

outside of him/her.

Popular novels are often plot-driven, but not all the time.

Character-driven Novels

The hero fights against the enemy that is

inside of him/her.

The enemy inside him/her is his/her weaknesses.

Serious literary novels are often

character-driven, but not all the time.

Plot-driven vs. Character-driven Novels

In my classes, 75% of the students

answered they like plot-driven novels and 25% of them answered they like character-driven novels..

Today’s Character-driven Novel

Character-driven novel

All the Little Live Things (1967)

Written by Wallace Stegner

I’s a story about a young woman who dies from cancer. The story is told by a narrator who is a retired man.

The title of the Introduction in All the Little Live Things (1967)

Now you see how it feels like when you lose a beautiful young friend with cancer. The more emotionally you’re attached to your friend, the more you’ll feel sad.

Introduction in All the Little Live Things (1967)

Joe Allstone is shocked by the death of Marian Catlin who is a neighbor of Joe’s.

Joe says, “Nevertheless, Marian has invaded me, and though my mind may not have changed, I will not be the same.” (11)

“Be open, be available, be exposed, be skinless. Skinless? Dance around the bones.” (14)

Introduction in All the Little Live Things (1967)

Readers still don’t know what really happened at the beginning of the novel.

Joe’s monologue is his struggle to recover from the shock he received from Marian’s death.

Joe says that he must accept all the miseries.

Later, readers will see Marian’s natural philosophy: all the human beings are born, become parents, and die.

Chapter One Subchapter 1

In the subchapter 1, the narrator Joe Allstone introduces the characters of this novel in the first subchapter.

Chapter OneSubchapter 2

The scenery in California is described through the eyes of the narrator who is taking a walk.

Jim Peck, a young man who reminds him of Caliban from Shakespeare’s play Tempest comes into his view.


The following quotation is the appearance of Jim Peck who parasites in Joe’s private land.

His brown eyes, extraordinarily large and bright, gleamed out of that excess of hair, and his teeth, badly spaced, the eyeteeth long and pointed, were bared in a hanging, watchful, half-crazy. (23)


The narrator’s wife Ruth gives Jim Peck permission to stay and live in their private land.

Joe doesn’t like the idea, but Ruth always thinks that their son Curtis would still be alive if they had given him another chance. That is why Ruth is very sympathetic to Jim Peck.


Following is the description of Jim Peck when he was building a tree house in Joe’s property .

“Every week there was a renewed outbreak of sawing and hammering.” (41)

Jim Peck had promised the Allstones

that he would just spread a tent, but the promise was a lie.


The narrator talks with his wife

Ruth ． Ruth says, “Well, we let him camp there, and we didn’t say he couldn’t have his friends in”. (46)

After all Jim Peck brought in friends and caused lots of troubles.

Chapter Two

In this chapter, the narrator says that not only God likes Paradise but Evil does so

too. Pesky bugs, weeds, and small animals swarm to his vegetable garden.

Chapter TwoSubchapter 1

Marian comes to talk to Joe for the first time. Joe says, “you can’t simply ignore the struggle for existence. There are good kinds of life and bad kind of life.”

Marian retorts, “Bad is what conflicts with your interest.”(58) Joe and Marian become friends.


In addition to the main characters, there is already a mention about a minor character, Tom Weld’s son. A landowner Tom Welds and his son are both unsophisticated characters. They play important roles in the

last climactic scene of this novel. A gelding begins to run around wildly. The

cause of the unruly gelding was the noise of the bulldozer that Tom Welds was driving.


Tom Welds had sold 20 acres to a developer and Joe bought five acres from it. The Welds family keeps Labrador dogs and the dogs eat

the chickens of the LoPresti family. Julie is the daughter’s name of the LoPrestis. Julie also plays a very important role in the climactic scene near the end of the story. She was riding on a gelding and the horse starts running wildly surprised by the noise of the bulldozer.

Chapter TreeSubchapter 1

Joe Allstone simply wanted to retire from work, but the life betrayed him. Tom Welds sold his land to some people and Joe’s

house, the LoPresiti’s house, and Marian Catlin’s small cottage were close together.

Debbie, Marian’s daughter looks like this: "Six or so, her hair pulled back in a pony tail from her thin wedge of a face, her eyes lost behind owlish little-girl glasses”. (83)


Marian looks like this: “a thin girl in a faded denim shirt”. (84)

Marian defends Jim Peck by saying, “I just think you shouldn’t judge a person by how

much hair he’s got.” (86) and “Everybody’s got his peculiarities”. (88)

Peck’s figure is as follows: “I saw him there

among them in his orange suit, a satyr come to the picnic.” (89)


After a description of beautiful scenery,

the narrator describes Jim Peck: “the shape of Disorder stands a little apart, in shadow, gleaming darkly, the orange suit like a gross flower against the brown spring-fallen leaves.” (90)


Joe says, “I found an insulated electric cable crawling out of the cut bank and drooping

into the creek bed.” (104) Thus, Joe finds that Jim Peck was stealing electricity. He wanted to destroy Jim Peck’s tree house. Then why can’t he do that?


The narrator Joe Allstone can’t destroy the tree house because Marian’s daughter Debby would be disappointed. The narrator says, “What, destroy the tree house that was Debby’s delight, and thus destroy Marian’s pleasure in seeing her child happy, and her satisfaction at living her way into the new place?” (105)

Chapter FourSubchapter 1

The following quotation is very beautiful.

“…on clear mornings we may look out our windows and see the redwood screeds of the patio wearing a pelt of frost.” (108)

Patio is an outdoor space that is attached to a house. In this scene, we are able to enjoy the

contrast through this description of the redwood patio that is covered with white frost.


However, Marian’s memory belongs to the summer, “She smells in the memory of sun, sage, dust, the faintly dry tannic odor of sun-beaten redwood, above all of tarwood.” (109)


Curtis, a disobedient, self-centered,

revolting son of Joe Allstone’s, is already dead.

Jim Peck is all over this novel and he is

used as a character that represent vulnerable and unsympathetic young people like him and Curtis.


There is a hint of connecting the details of the novel and its theme. How can we best describe scenes, if we would like to communicate the main theme? In this novel,

the answer is in the contrast of life and death, active and inactive, happiness and misery. All the inner feelings of the main characters are

connected to the scenery.


In this subchapter, even though only the name of the neighboring people are

mentioned, the names make us feel as if they are really alive.

Joe decides to buy a gelding for Marian and Debby: “So we drove them around looking at stables and ranches until we found a fifteen-year-old piebald gelding, marbled like a cake even to the eyes.” (116)


“ …John, Dave Weld, and the stable man unloading the piebald” (117)

In this scene, they are unloading the horse out of the truck. After this, while they were building a fence for the horse, Jim Peck

was practicing yoga.


The following is the comment on Jim Peck by Marian: “They don’t push anybody around. They treat children like people. Debby adores them.” (126)

On the same page there is a reference that Julie, who is Fran LoPresti’s daughter, comes to visit Jim

Peck regularly. Marian says,“They might think it was a joke to initiate them.” (126)

“Initiate” in this particular page means smoking pot and drinking beer. Marian is saying that it was Jim Peck’s joke that he gave marijuana to the15 year old girl. Marian is open to the things Jim Peck was doing.


I think the following words of Marian is in the center of her

argument: “They aren’t opposed to self-discipline, only to the traditional conventional kind that they think are antilife.” (128)

On the other hand, Joe says, “He’s improvising his exercises, is he?” and this shows that Joe doubts about the authenticity of Jim Peck’s yoga. Next sentence summarizes Joe’s idea of criticism against

Jim Peck: “You can’t open your mouth or move your hand without living by rules, generally somebody else’s, and that goes for those birdbrains across the creek, too.” (128)


At the beginning of the subchapter, Joe is picking up empty beer cans that Jim Peck threw away. “So I went on picking up my daily beer cans along the lane where the freedom force threw them,….” (128) Further more, Peck is called “The Most High” and “Newcomers are not allowed to see Peck” ． By these words, we are directed to see how ridiculous Jim Peck is.


Many university students come to live with Jim Peck in June when the semester is over. “Many nights we saw them sitting around a fire and heard them singing.” (130)

Some of the members were promiscuous: “Margo was a founder of something called the Committee for Sexual Freedom…” (131) “Promiscuous” means“having sex with a lot of people.”


The following is at the end of this subchapter: “…occasionally a philosopher was his [Jim Peck’s] source. More often, his enthusiasms were straight out of old James

Dean movies and Ginsberg poems.” (133) Ginsberg’s name is also in the following sentence. Curtis’s girlfriend sent a box of Curtis’s books to Joe after he died. “Miller, Albee, Kerouac, Sartre, Genet, the Marquis de Sade, Ginsberg, Burrows – a poison garland from the Grove.” (158)


Joe hears from Marian that Jim Peck will start “Professor Peck’s Outdoor Academy”.

That sounds totally absurd for Joe because Jim Peck is a “Squatter, Nester, Intruder, Interloper, Trespasser.” 　 (137)


Jim Peck thinks that what he is going to make is a “University of Free Mind”.

Marian is sympathetic to Jim Peck: “They are just thoughtless. If you unbend and get to know them better you’d probably like them. I like them.”

(138) Joe answers to her: “You like whatever you look on.”


Marian says, “I do feel sorry for him. People his age have every right to be appalled at the world they find themselves in, the bomb and all the rest of it.” (140) Joe says that only the guys like Jim Peck will push the button of a-bomb. Joe does not like the temperament of Jim Peck who remains aloof from the real world. Joe says, “Somebody push the button, or one of our improvements will backfire, and our technical tinkering will finally destroy all life, and

ourselves with it.” (142) And Marian says, “I don’t believe it.” (142)


Marian says, “Order is the basis of everything. John and I sort of believe

Teilhard de Chardin that an evolution is only a perfecting of consciousness. Do you?” (143) And to be

able to perfect the consciousness, “we have to risk disorder.” (144)

ピエール・テイヤール・ド・シャルダン（ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ， 1881 年 5 月 1 日 - 1955 年 4 月 10 日）フランス人のカトリック司祭（イエズス会士）で、古生物学者・地質学者、カトリック思想家


Then Joe says, “The trouble with Peck, he doesn’t realize that the world he lies in is holding itself together in desperation, with sticking plaster and patching cement and Band-Aids, and needs the support of every member.” (145) Joe’s above words sound appropriate.


Joe and Marian thus argue over Jim Peck. When Marian asks Joe why he allows Jim Peck to stay in his property, he

says that he doesn’t want to be regarded as illiberal.


This subchapter is a letter that is

addressed to Marian dated July 3. Joe did

not mail the letter, but he writes everything about his son Curtis in this letter.

Joe could never open Curtis’s heart and he blames his own impatience for that. Joe tried to make Curtis follow the rules, but “He wanted not one scrap of it, he didn’t agree with a single value I had.” (150)


Joe Allston later recalls his own attitude: “She (Marian) taught me the stupidity of the attempt to withdraw and be free of trouble and harm”. (286)

Joe’s biggest problem used to be his son Curtis’s inability to grow up and behave as a responsible adult.

Joe thought that he could escape from everything by retirement, but he learned that it is impossible to be free from trouble.


Curtis never became a responsible adult. We cannot find any solution to change a rebellious young man into a responsible citizen in this

novel. We see the despair of an old man whose son never became a decent adult.


The following is Joe’s idea that the 20th century corrupted Curtis: “It encouraged him to hunt out the shoddy, the physical, the self-indulgent, the shrill, and the vulgar, and to call these things freedom, and put them above Roman virtue…” (152) “Shoddy” means inferior in quality.


Next sentence shows Curtis’s weaknesses: “He was drunken, disorderly, and promiscuous from early adolescence.” (152) After this sentence, he list Curtis’s other follies.


Then Joe told Curtis about his own follies:

“Trying to explain myself, I told him my own life, including some shameful episodes, …” (160)


Joe tells us his background: “But I had been raised on the run by an unfortunate woman whose first husband, my father, shot himself in the barn,…” (162) This

episode shows how life was hard for him. In the next quote, Joe summarizes his attitude toward Curtis.


Curtis could have disagreed with us incessantly if we had felt in him some integrity that gave his disagreement weight. We couldn’t. I have to blame myself

for not finding any way of reaching him, but I can’t feel that either Ruth or I had much to do with his corruption. (152)


In the previous statement, Joe says that he couldn’t feel integrity in Curtis. Even though Joe blames himself for not trying to reach Curtis, he doesn’t blame himself for

Curtis’s corruption. As a conclusion of this chapter, Joe says that nothing went well.

Chapter FiveSubchapter 1

In this subchapter, the topics are about

their cat, gopher, and king snake.


Marian comes to see Joe and Ruth. Until she came, they were playing with water. Marian seems to be suffering from

sunstroke. Marian’s beautiful figure is described. 　 Marian recites some lines from Robert Frost and that gives us impression that she is living with all her might.


Scenes become bright with Marian presence. It is probably because we are seeing things through Joe’s viewpoint and feeling. Joe says, “Would I have so doted on this girl if she had not been maimed and threatened? Was it to herself or danger that I responded with so much anxious solicitude?” (178)

doted 溺愛した love someone very much

maimed 傷つけられる wounded seriously

solicitude 心配　 anxiety


Before this quotation, Marian talks about her ideas of nature. She says that oases and vegetable gardens are valuable because there is hot weather and deserts in the nature. Her idea is different from Joe’s idea of cherishing the

vegetables in the garden. Her idea is to see values in everything.


On page 80, Joe had said, “Love is a carrier of death – the only thing, in fact, that makes death significant.” There is a similarity and

analogy between “desert” and “death”, and between “vegetable garden” and “love”.


Joe says to Marian, “Pain is poison! Don’t go hunting for it. Never praise it. Avoid it all you can and beat it if you must, but

never never mistake it for something desirable!” (79)Joe extremely likes Marian and that is why he cares so much about her and her death is a very big issue for him.


Even if we love someone and we feel deeply sorry about his or her loss, we cannot reverse the process of life and death. We all have to accept the reality of

death. I think this reality is common to all the serious character-driven novels.


Fran LoPresti called Joe to come to see the sculpture that she made. So Joe, Ruth, and Marina go to visit the LoPresti’s. The following is the description of the sculpture: “The neck was a hammer handle wrapped with leather like the neck of one of those African women stretched with circle after circle of copper wire. The face was composed only of the hammers down-hooking

claws….” (187) Joe thought that the sculpture represents Fran’s daughter Julie.


A very short anecdote about a dangerous relationship between parents and their son

is inserted. . The son wrecked their family car, so they took his learner’s license. Their son killed them by ax. The parents never understood that the son wanted to do the same things as his friends.


The following quotation makes us feel the taste of July Fourth Party at the LoPresti. Let’s enjoy this vivid talk.

My God, did you walk? You poor souls. What’s all the cold-weather gear, Joe? Man, you out of your mind? Hello, Ruth. Hello Marian, where’s your handsome husband? Still off with those lady seals? (192)


A party guest Annie Williamson was a veterinarian, raiser of beagles, and her voice was like a man’s voice. Joe asks Annie Williamson a question, “What kind of dog is Fran’s statue?” Annie says, “Pointer ?” Joe says,“It’s an Ashcan Hound.” Then Fran’s expression turned to be disappointed, raged,

and showed hatred. This episode is a subplot that leads toward the blow-up against Jim Peck. Joe was drunk and upset about his own joke.


The party is still going on.

“I could see two couples dancing, trying in their drink to be as young as their children, doing the frug of the watusi or the jerk, one of those rope-climbing, joint-dislocatin dances.” (206)

I think the above description is a good example of dynamic description. We can describe not only static scenes but also dynamic movements like this scene.


Joe, Ruth, and Marian got out of Fran LoPresti’s party.

“By the time I reached the pasture I could see the golden grass. The sky spread out, full of dim stars.

From back of me radiated the full renewed volume of the party’s noise.” This is the

noise of the party they just got out of. “Then I heard sounds from ahead and below. I stopped and listened: a loud banging and pounding, and when

it ended, a clamor of shouts and laughter….” (207) This is Jim Peck’s party.


Joe drops in to Marian’s house on his way home from Fran’s party. Then Joe knows Marian’s

serious condition:“They gave her no hope that they could save her, radiation would only slow things down. Radiation was hard on the patient, which was all right, but the worst was that none could say what it might do to the fetus.” (213)

Fetus means a young human before birth. The condition of Marian’s cancer was the worst kind.


Joe hears the noisy voice of Jim Peck and his followers as soon as he got out of

Marian’s house. “Gimme that BANG BANG BANG, Gimme that BANG BANG BANG, Gimme that BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG!” (215)


Joes goes into the place where they were having a party. The following is Joe’s inner

voice: “Right where they all wanted to be, out of their skulls. Well, that would be enough disturbance for one evening.” (217-218)


Joe sees, “a hasty tangle of limbs, bare skin, the white eyes of startled turning faces a swatch of long dark hair” (218) in the tree house twenty feet above the ground.

Joe shouts, “Turn off the damn noise!” Joe had drunk a lot of alcohol at Fran’s party. Joe tells them to move the cars

immediately and they are gone. I think

this is the climactic scene of Joe and Jim Peck’s confrontation.

Chapter SixSubchapter 1

Joe meets John at the airport. John is a marine biologist and doing his research in Alaska. Joe

says, “She won’t take any treatments. She says they might harm the baby.” (224)

Both Joes and John want to save Marian, so they do not understand why she wants to save

her baby, not herself. “How can they make a statement like that, that she hasn’t a chance?”(226) 　


Joe takes John to his home and Joe sees Jim Peck then. Jim Peck says he came to explain,

“…people get hung up, especially kids. Parents ride them, they can’t make it in school, love problems, all that. They‘re shut in, all tangled up in rules, all screwed up, you know. I mean, there have to have ways out, they have to tear out of the net….” (229)


In this novel, Stegner created the opposition between Joe Allstone and Jim

Peck. Jim Peck being an outlaw, this part is necessary because Jim Peck has to be against everything that binds him.

In the following conversation between Joe and Jim, Jim asks Joe to give him permission to stay and Joe says no.


Jim Peck comes back and asks Joe to keep his personal possessions.

“I’ll have to leave the stuff in the shed till later. All right?”

It was not a request, it was still a challenge, I shrugged.

“All right.” (234)


After a week, Joe doesn’t feel well about chasing out Jim Peck. On one hand, he did it in anger, not after reflection. On another hand, he knows that Marian will regret

their going. Joe says, “She (Marian) had a mystical confidence that by trying many things they might eventually learn something that we who tried little would never learn.” (236) Thus, Joe regrets that he drove them out.


After chasing out Jim Peck, Joe was kept at

arms length by Fran and Julie. Marian was preparing for dying in July and August, resting most of the time and forcibly swallowing food. Joe kept visiting her many times a day.


Marian did not want to keep alive as “a morphine vegetable”. She says, “I swear we never know half what life means, not even what it feels like.

Birth and death are the greatest experiences we ever know, and we smother them in drugs and twilight sleep.” (240) Smother means to suffocate by preventing free breathing.


In the subchapter 3, Marian expresses her

idea of death. While Marian thinks that death is natural, Joe cannot accept her death in her young age. Of course she also would like to keep living and have fun with her husband, daughter, and friends, if it is possible.


Marian is indifferent to her daughter

Debby because she wants her to be more independent.


Joe and Ruth are living for the Catlins now.

“Holding ourselves available for Catlin’s need, we accepted no invitations and issued none.” (252)

“Ruth cooked and cleaned and laundered, I played driver and yardman.” (252)


The following quote is not directly contributing to the explanation of the plot,

but this is good because it explains why young people sometimes do ridiculous things.


She (Julie) won’t agree to an abortion. Why should she? She says they gave her pills and she threw them away. She wanted to get pregnant to spite Fran, and now she has, and that’s it. (257)


Marian’s condition becomes extremely bad and she is carried into the hospital. She comes back with a nurse after three days. She is suffering from cancer and at

the same time pregnant. Death and life are in her body at the same time.


Joe and Ruth are sitting on the porch of

their house. The quiet atmosphere described in the following quote is in clear contrast against Marian’s critical condition.


For a long time that evening we sat on the terrace, while the swallows and later the bats sewed the darkening air together over the oaks, and the crude gouge that would become a road faded into dust, then dark. (262)


This is a very short chapter. Marian’s condition worsens, so she has to go back to the hospital.

Chapter SevenSubchapter 1

Joe takes Marian to the hospital in his car. They see Julie on the horse, and the also see Dave Weld’s bulldozer is scraping the mountain. There comes Jim Peck to get his leftover. In front of his Honda motorcycle, his friends are riding on the Volkswagen bus. Weld’s bulldozer is above them. Joe Allstone uses the horn.


“ In the narrow space between bus and

motorcycle the gelding was suddenly wild. … I heard hoofs on hollow plank, Julie screamed, a long, terrible cry, and they were down, invisible behind the Volkswagen and the dust.” (278)


This is truly an over-dramatic scene. They have to kill the horse and remove the body to the shoulder of the road.

“We struggled, slipping in thick blood, dragging at legs, mane, tail, prying at broken legs….”(281)

Epilogue

It is February. Joe is still under the shock of Marian’s death. “Peace was not in anything I saw or smelled or felt.”

(284)

“She taught the stupidity of the attempt to withdraw and be free of trouble and harm. That was as foolish as Peck’s version of ahimsa and the states.” (286)

Ahimsa is Buddhist doctrine of nonviolence. The lesson Joe learned is to know that death cannot be avoided.

Conclustion

What made Joe so much shocked to tell such a long story? Marian’s death is used as a key incident and motivation to tell a story. Joe is an viewpoint character and Marian is a heroic character. What was a hardship that Marian had to overcome? It

was death. Marian could overcome death by dying. She is the hero of this story.

Conclustion

Jim Peck, on the other hand, has done a number of unfavorable things. Joe Allstone repeatedly says why Jim Peck has to be destroyed. Marian, on the other hand, doesn’t think that Jim Peck’s activities are evil. She rather thinks that they are natural. Thus, Marian accepted everything she was given: good and bad, and birth and death.

Conclustion

Stegner is asking us whether we can accept and forgive everything including birth and death.

SWBST

What is SWBST?

Someone (Main characters)

Wanted (What they wanted)

But (problems they have)

So (How they solved them)

Then (What do you think will happen then?)

SWBST

If we see young people as the main characters….

S: Marian, Jim Peck, Curt and other young people in

the 1960’s

W: They (especially Curt and Peck) were seeking

freedom from social rules. They sought after counter culture.

B: They tried many untraditional things: they sang,

drank, and smoked. They caused noise problem, pregnancy of the minor, and death.

SWBST

S: They had to leave the land. Some of them were indicted. Well, this doesn’t look like a solution. However, we can still say

that they got freedom even if it was only for a short time.

T: They will create many culturally new things. Actually people of that generation created all sorts of things we are using today from rock music to computer networks.

SWBST

If we see Joe as the main character….

S: Joe Allstone

W: He wanted to retire from everything.

B: Jim Peck comes to live in his property and Marian comes to live in his neighborhood: The

new situation brings him noise problem and looking-after-a-cancer-patient problem. These are just external problems.

SWBST

B: His real internal problem is his lack of sympathy: He says, “Sympathy I have failed in, stoicism I have barely passed. But I have made straight A in irony….” (14)Even though Joe did right things, he was unsympathetic and ….

SWBST

S: Joe finally chases out Jim Peck, but

Marian dies.

T: He will be depressed for a while…and then….

Thank you for listening!

In the end Joe has to accept the severe reality of losing loved ones. Stegner’s novels are full of characters like him whose personality has a little problem and All the Little Live Things is one of such character-driven novels.

on character-driven novels (sendai, june21, 2014)

Education