Tag Archives: Groundhog Day

Give It To Me Straight – Fates and Furies (Part 1/3)

4 Replies

Then, play it again.

Fates and furiesReaders of Fates and Furies find a big story of modern marriage and relationship wrapped between the covers of this National Book Award Finalist. Lauren Groff’s novel offers a wealth of literary resources with her creative reinvention of structure, style and character. This three part analysis begins with storytelling and structure.

The Straight Line – Sequential Plot

Lancelot, nicknamed Lotto, tells his story for the first half of the book, almost two hundred pages in this four hundred page novel. In The Detroit Free Press  published interview, Lauren Groff  refers to her story as a tale of privilege. Let me count the ways that Lotto is privileged. First, he has fortune when he needs it and choses to surrender his fortune for his desires. Second, he has success. Maybe he was lucky or worked hard. Or maybe he fits the description of privilege – well educated, wealthy, male and white. Third, characters surround him, offer support and champion his cause – especially his wife. These factors propel Lotto’s story to the forefront and the first half of the book.

The point of view begins omniscient as the reader sees the first married union of Lotto and Mathilde – lest it be thought that the entire story is about Lotto. From there, the point of view shifts to a deep third in Lotto’s point of view. His story dips back to his birth with a clever device of repeating a story told many times to him. Time moves forward with Lotto’s perceptions dominating the story of his friends, his dreams and his marriage to mystery woman, Mathilde.

The Jagged Line – Fractured Plot

Mathilde, the wife, encourages readers to identify with her rage. Let me count the ways that Mathilde is angry. First, as a child, she is blamed for a deadly mean streak, shamed and never forgiven. Her survival depends on distant relatives who have no concern for her wellbeing. Second, egotistical and pretentious Lotto is the best part of her life, and without him, she is the devastated widow – her education and hard work unraveled without her center, her husband. Third, Mathilde believes she is “the interesting one.” Mathilde’s past is an example of the writer pushing a character to the outer limits of believability. Themes of inequality thread through the novel. In Lotto’s point of view, he blindly accepts Mathilde’s lack of family and friends. Mathilde’s half of the novel, another two hundred pages, tells her scrambled tragic version of her life story.

Mathilde’s narration alternates between her angry widow world and chapters revealing her  past and the formation of her values and beliefs. Mathilde selectively takes the reader through her childhood slowly opening the doors to understand her motives. Mathilde’s mean streak dots every chapter for the reader. Her only softness comes for the man she marries, and he is not spared from her passive aggressive ways.

Play It Again – Story Arc

Throw the traditional story arc in the trash for this novel except that Lotto’s half of the book is fairly traditional. Mathilde’s point of view jumps back in time and returns to her widowed agony almost like a zigzag across a graph of time. Unlike parallel plots, this story challenges even the most ambitious of screenwriter. For example, The Girl on the Train uses multiple points of view, slowly revealing a suspenseful and complicated plot arc. And hence, bestseller becomes screenplay and film. Some stories succeed with repetition – a retry of the same idea like the “back to square one” game – as used in the movie, Groundhog Day, and new Sci-fi film, Edge of Tomorrow; Live, Die, Repeat. Each repetition moves the story one step further.

Groff’s repetition, however, drills beneath what the reader assumed was the true story. For every major event in Lotto’s life, the reader now sees the hand of Mathilde. Her callous placement of an obituary notice punishes Lotto for his abandonment. She deliberately denies Lotto the children he wants. And Mathilde leverages everything to make her husband and his plays successful. In Mathilde’s story, vengefulness and anger are ever present – from the bruising of a teasing schoolmate to the personal and financial destruction of Lotto’s best friend.

In her interview, Groff states she planned to publish the two stories separately. The two halves together form a rich comparison in structure, style and character. The next post “It’s Greek To Me” will examine Groff’s style and literary references. After that, a third post will explore character and the human psychology of relationship and attraction. As seen in structure, marriage “For Better or For Worse” is a risky endeavor.

 

Chutes and Ladders—Plotting for ages 3-100

8 Replies

gameGames teach the mechanics of plot. A player begins Chutes and Ladders on a path with some ladders up and some chutes down. The sequence of action and consequence is plot, pure and simple.

Same Game Different Century

The Milton Bradley game comes from an ancient Indian game called Snakes and Ladders. In Moksha Patam, the game follows Hindu philosophy and morality lessons with few ladders for virtues and many snakes for vices. Salman Rushdie wrote in Midnight’s Children about the game as “the eternal truth that for every ladder you hope to climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner, and for every snake a ladder will compensate.”

Mastering the Game

Snakes are consequences for vices such as disobedience, vanity, vulgarity, theft, lying, drunkenness, debt, murder rage, greed, pride and lust. These plot elements sound like the playbook for Netflix’s House of Cards. In the television series, plot twists are the norm, and consequences rarely weigh on the characters’ decision to act. Character development and flaw emerge as the driving force for plot (see Plotting for the Flaw). In House of Cards, each character’s manipulation, deception and corruption goes without consequence, until the proverbial house of cards tumbles to the ground.

The Parallel Plot Game

Beyond the character contributions to plot, the game board offers second attempts and alternate possibilities—both forms of parallel plots. For example, every child playing this game, has counted the spaces to the next ladder and hoped to roll that exact number. Often, the die indicates a number short of the goal, and the outcome of the game changes. When I missed a ladder, or even worse when I landed on the long slide back to the beginning, I thought what if . . .  what if . . . I had rolled one space more.

The What If Game

The movie, Sliding Doors, is the one space more plot. The film shows two alternate realities based on either catching a train or missing it. Children’s books, such as Goosebumps by R. L. Stine, try this format with choosing different outcomes by flipping a coin, but the choice is one or the other. Sliding Doors shows both outcomes at the same time, jumping between each version in a confusing medley of scenes from the beginning of the film until the ending. As with other parallel plots, the emotional highs and lows are braided and mirrored with the two plot lines (see Paula Picked a Plighted Path . . .). With characters in common, the two plot lines—although parallel and in alternate realities—occasionally trip over each other in theme and traipse into the same settings at even the same times. While this film’s structure rates high for creativity, the challenge is how to bring two stories spiraling in different directions back together at the end. In this film, the solution is a similar event in the same setting with alternate outcomes—life or death. Another example of alternate realities is Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid which shows alternating chapters of the protagonist’s choices.

The “Back to Square One” Game

In the “back to square one” scenario, a player is trapped and stuck in a repetitive loop of one ladder and one chute. What happens the second time around? The same events? Different? In the movie Groundhog Day, this different perspective occurs and reoccurs as a form of parallel plots. The protagonist tests the limits of his actions (vices) in a seemingly endless cycle of romantic comedy consequences of the “boy loses girl” variety. Eventually, the character decides to use his recycled groundhog days to improve his behavior (virtues), and the character arc takes him to the romantic comedy conclusion of “boy gets girl.”

The Next Generation’s Game

My basement is fertile ground for role playing games such as Grand Theft Auto. In GTA IV, the gamer chooses one of three characters, one of three parallel plots. Video games intensify the game playing experience of previous generations. Readers from this generation will expect parallel plots and creative structures beyond the basics of story.