(no subject)

[tanaise]

So I'm doing the plot focus with the OWW, which has 10 stories over the next two weeks to read and discuss. And while I should have posted this on the mailing list, we're up to 74 posts there for the first day, and I don't think I'm so important as to be worth making 200 others read my comments all the time. So this is my plot discussion spot when I don't want to post on the list. Now, you have to go into this with the understanding that I have no clue what a plot really is.

Reading Selection for Monday, March 1 is "Cloak of Anarchy" by Larry Niven (http://www.larryniven.org/stories/cloak_of_anarchy.htm )

A guy is at a park, officially for exercise, but also to hang out in one of his favorite places. We're in a future setting (though this is a past story, so it probably is set in 2004. :) , and the park is an old stretch of freeway which is now an 'anarchy park', an area where the only rule is not to hurt others. And to enforce this rule, there's a shiny cool item that zaps bad guys. So the guy is walking to meet someone, and in the process sees a girl with a fancy anti-grav cloak and an acquaintance with a scientific bent. Said acquaintance reveals that he's planning on breaking all of the shiny cool items for the purpose of..well, for the purpose of anarchy, I suppose, but mostly to see what happens. Protag meets up with girlfriend right as the shiny things get broken. They end up being unable to leave the park. Anarchy--the real stuff--kicks in. It is not fun. And they are saved by the bell--new shiny things show up right as things are getting *really* nasty for the group.

There's a general consensus on the focus list that the plot was idea driven. But the idea I saw in the story isn't enough of a shiny thing to move the story. The idea is obvious: Anarchy doesn't work. The plot is character based--all plot actions arise from the actions of the characters, and without those characters, or with different actions, it's a different story. all the events happen as a result of the people interacting with each other. How is that *not* character driven? The narrator makes choices--conscious and unconscious--all through the story. "Maybe someone ought to stop him. " he thinks, and he doesn't do anything about it. He doesn't act twice more: when the naked girl gets attacked, and when the sign boy doesn't come with them. He does act to get the fountain back to the people, which I really appreciated, and unlike others, I thought it ended well. It wasn't a deus ex machina ending in my mind, exactly. It was a ex machina, I suppose, but I'm not sure if the true sense of the phrase is real here--the god from the machine in greek plays is something which has always been off stage and vague showing up and fixing everything. This wasn't really an outside influence. This is even something they've been expecting--the restoration of the control--even if it wasn't something they expected right there.

I don't know how much thinking about plot I did with this story. I do remember noticing it was an easy plot, and the reason I noticed this was because I'd pay attention to the scenic details in the story as I read, and noticing things that were clearly important--the simpleness of the plot let the author seed the text with seemingly irrelevant details that really weren't. Symbols. Metaphors. that sort of thing.

I don't know. I have to think about it more.

Comments

[two-star.livejournal.com]

The moral is "anarchy doesn't work", but the idea that drives the plot is more like "Shiny zappy things in parks provide us with an interesting laboratory to explore notions about anarchy." The characters are chosen to be ones that are suited to developing that idea. Because Niven know what he's doing, he has the characters drive the events of the plot, but the justification for the plot ultimately comes from that idea.

(I read this story many years ago, and recall liking it, but I'd have to look at it again to say anything particularly intelligent.)