Plot is the whole situation and a good plot is a significant situation, so arranged that its significance is wrung out of it to the uttermost.... a situation in which characters are caught, tried, perplexed, harassed and put to the test by circumstances. This is whatAeschylus and Sophocles did. Hardy and George Eliot did it. For Shakespeare character is an instrument for creating situations. The characters are thrown up stark against the human skyline under the urge of circumstances. Elemenls of Aristotlean plot have to be chosen and put together as the elements of a picture are composed. It should be accompanied hy constructive imagiiration which pounces upon something significaurt and interesting in life. The plot should have unity-a beginning, a middle and an end.
The beginning must have something to fbllow, the middle naturally follows, precedes something else, the end is that something else. In spite of diversions and details the piecc should unfoki the author's conception of an individual reacting to certain social tbrces. Mere realism does not meet fuistotle's deniand. He is not concerned with historian,s truth or the analyst's truth. It should be aesthetically revealing. The poet is not concelxed with whal has happehed but. what may happen. So it is universal and philosophic. The poet must have the capacily to discern what is universal, see truth poetically and communicate it.
A thing is true Ior the poet if it is true for the milieu in which his characters are placed. The poet should prel'er probahle impossibilities to improbable possibilities. The tragic action must be ol'a certain magnitude or size. "Beauty depends'on nragnirucie ind oidei.'i:fhe'ibiioii oi the tragedy may be limited to one day or slightly more, according to Aristotle. The action must be large enough to admit a change from evil to good or from good to evil, large enough to display good and evil adequately. A complex action is better than a simple action. A complex action is one which includes a perpetual or a sudden unexpected turn ofevenls or reversal of the fortunes of the hero. This is accompanied by an anagnorisis or recognition of this turn. A simple plot is to be avoided. Because in it the change of fortune comes about withoutperipeteia or anagnorisis. Peripeteia or reversal of fortune occurs when a course of action intended to produce a particular result, produces the reverse of it.
Thirs the messenger from Corinth tries to cheer up Oedipus and dispel his fear of marrying his mother, but by revealing who he is, he produces exactly the opposite result. [n the peripeteia, rightly understood, is implied a whole tragic philosophy of life. For the deepest tragedy is not when men are struck down by the flow of change or fate like Job in the Bible, but when their destruction is the work of their own umvitting hands. For it is the perpetual tragic irony of lif'e that again and again men do thus laboriously contrive their ou,n annihilation, or kill the thing they love.
Thus Oedipus runs headlong into the jaws of the very destiny from which he flies; or Shylock is caught in his own trap; when Othello at last sees himself as one who has flung away like an ignorant savage, the priceless iewel of his own happiness; when King Lear delivers himself into the hands ol'two daughters that despise him and foolishly rejects the only one that loves. All these are peripeteia in the true sense ol'Aristotle. The most poignant tragedy o1'humm life is the rvork of'human blindnecs--thc tragcdy of crrors. Pcripcteia, in short, is thc rvorking in blindness tt) one's dcl'eat. Anagnorisis (recognition) is the rcalization o1'tlie truth, tlie opcning o1 the eyes, the sudden lighting flaslr in the darkness.
The llasir-o1 revelation may appear, as Aristotle poinrs out, either befbre it is too latc or aftcr... { tcr the catastrophe, scrving only to reveal it, as when I Oedipus disc/' :rs his guilt, or Rustom recognizes the dying son he has himself sll".n. Peripeteia or reversal is a change from one state of afTairs to its opposite, from good fortune to bad. Anagnorisis is a change from ignorance to knowledge. It is best when coincident with peripetia. Both combined will produce pity and fear which are the typical tragic f'eelings. Reversal and recognition are inevitably followed by a scene of sufl'ering or calamity. It involves a destructive or painful action as death on the stage, bodily agony, wounds and the like. Recognition or discovery is of 5 kinds.
The first type is by means of signs. The signs are of dillerent kinds. (a) congenital marks like warts and moles (b) marks acquired after birth, namely, scars (as in the case of Odysseus) (c) token or necklaces. To use them for express proof is not artistic. The second type is recognition invented by the poet at will, purposively. It lacks eut. An example is Orestes revealing himself to Iphigenia. In eff'ect il is like giving a token. The third type depends on memory when the sight of some obiecs awakens a feeling. For example Odysseus hearing the minstrel play the lyre. The lburth type is by process of reasoning. "Somsone resembling me has come, no onc resembles me but Orcstes; thercfbi'e, Orestr:s has come. Thc last is that which arisc-s li'om the incidents thcmselves rvhr-rc discovcry is ,nadc by nittural Incans. Such are Oedipus arl,l Iplrirrcnia l'hc scr:oltl ircst is hrr t'ciisoning.
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