Storytelling is a complex process. There is no right or wrong way to tell a story, but there are techniques and style options that can give them deeper meaning, make them easier to understand or relate to, or make them more engaging. I have found plenty of examples of these different style options and techniques in the reading we have done in this portion of class. The two works I am going to look at in this essay are an old Indian romantic comedy in the form of a play, The Recognition of Sakuntala by Kalidasa, and a more modern fiction novel based in Haiti and on Haitian characters, The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat. Both texts are very different, but both are able to tell a story successfully. Even so, the way the story is told sets the tone for the readers and prepares them for the experience.
One of the major texts we looked at during this section of class was The Recognition of Sakuntala by Kalidasa. This writer chose to utilize elements of mythology, suspense, and comedy to engage his viewers in the story being told. He also split it up into sections, called acts, to account for time passing and to progress the plotline forward. The genre of Kalidasa’s play was romantic comedy. At the very beginning, when we see King Dusyanta enter the hermitage, he senses an omen that there are women nearby. “So still a place, yet now this vein throbs in my arm, Presaging some woman’s charm. In an Ashram? Destiny is fixed, and all doors open onto what must be (Kalidasa, 2008, pg.10).” This quote from the play explains the romance aspect of the genre. The king senses that women are around, charming women, just four pages in, at the first place he visits. This indicates that the women will play a big part in the story, and we can infer that the rest of the experience will have to do with romance. As for the comedy portion, this can be seen in some of the more outlandish portions of the play. One such section can be shown through this quote. “King [longingly]. Wonderful! Even this threat enhances her charm: Where the bee flies, there fly her eyes, beneath her lovely knitted brows, she darts an ardent glance, inspired by fear. Mere practice, for on other days, such looks shall match a lover’s gaze in pure desire (Kalidasa, 2008, pg. 13).” This quote describes the king’s fantasizing about Sakuntala’s beauty as she is being attacked by a bee. It is meant to be a romantic scene where he watches his love from the shadows, but because of the way he obsesses over the way her face contorts in fear, it comes off as more amusing than anything else. Especially as he rehearses the best way to enter the situation, as the hero, in the shadows by himself.
His genre for this play being romance and comedy also meant that certain things had to happen within, things the viewers would expect based on what they knew about the genre. For example, one would expect that the two lovers would reunite at the end and that no one would die. Had they not reunited, or someone was to die in the end, the story wouldn’t be very romantic and anything funny within would have been overshadowed by the tragedy. In some ways, genre can affect stories in a negative light as well. When Kalidasa chose to write a romantic comedy for his audience, he effectively locked himself in a narrative box. There were only so many ways the story could go, and as a result, the ending felt somewhat forced and unrealistic. Although, our class cannot know exactly what the author’s intention for the story was, as he wrote it as a play, and we only read the stage directions and the script. An element of the story was missing because of this.
Something the author was able to use to his advantage, though, was his use of mythology. Through his use of things like nymphs and magic, he was able to emphasize the comedy portion of the play. One example of this is when King Dusyanta is called upon by a god to come and fight demons. When he is summoned, the god’s charioteer captures and pretends to threaten the king’s confidant in a somewhat humorous way in order to gain his attention. “Vidusaka [off stage]. Help! Help! I can see you-can’t you see me? There’s no hope for me then-I’m like a mouse in the claws of a cat! King. Spirit! You may be invisible, but my arrows have no need of sight! Now I draw my bow, and now” … “Immediately Matali appears, at the same time releasing the Vidusaka (Kalidasa, 2008, pgs. 87-88).” Capturing the Vidusaka, in this scene, is supposed to be funny, and it does seem to come across that way in the text. Although, had the charioteer not had the magical ability to turn himself and others invisible, it would have been less humorous and more concerning. Had he just walked up presenting himself as he was and threatened to kill someone the king was close to, there probably would have been some sort of backlash. But, as he was able to present himself as a spirit when doing so, it was taken as a joke that everyone could laugh off.
The use of mythical elements like nymphs also allowed the author to increase the suspense of the story. He was able to present the plotline as part of a divine plan and have creatures spying on the characters in the background, keeping the readers on the edge of their seats. Even though it is likely that they could guess what was going to happen, the parts of the play, like when Dusyanta was grieving in the garden in a rather drawn-out way, were turned into a suspenseful waiting game. The nymph in the background talking about a divine plan and a fated reunion could serve as a device to increase excitement and the expectation of a happy ending. “Sanumati [aside]. Alas! Alas! The lamp is there, and yet a screen comes between the king and the light, and he is in darkness still. I could make him happy now, but I’ve overheard great Indra’s queen, as she was consoling Sakuntala, say that the gods themselves, wanting their share of the ancestral offerings, will maneuver matters so that her husband will soon greet his lawful wife (Kalidasa, 2008, pg. 86).” It is in this way that he was able to increase the suspense of the romance in his play. Letting the viewers in on the secret that the romance was fated to happen, and that, even though the majority of the characters didn’t know yet, there would very soon be an opportunity to fix the harm that had been done. Otherwise, watching Dusyanta suffer may have been more of a tragic event. Knowing that it would have a happy ending, later on, made it more bearable to watch, or read, happen.
The other major work of fiction that we read in this section of the class was The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat. The Dew Breaker is a modern novel broken up into nine separate stories that are all connected. The main thread of connection in each of the stories was one man. The man’s name was never revealed, only his profession and the questionable profession he held in his past. The man, at the time the story was told, was a barber. But in his past, he was a dew breaker, a torturer. Danticat used several interesting format choices in her novel that served to make it engaging and relatable. One of these tactics was the choice to delay the reveal of names, and sometimes the choice not to reveal them at all, as was the case with the man at the center of the story. This served not only to increase suspense, but also to draw the reader more firmly into the story. When we don’t know the names of the characters, or what they are supposed to look like, we can fill in whatever feels right in our imaginations. For example, “Inside, the preacher flipped a light switch. The dangling bulbs flickered from high in the middle of the room (Danticat, 2005, pg. 205).” From this quote from Danticat’s novel, we can see her choice at work. This could be any preacher in Haiti, in any part of the country. The characters can become anyone, or can even represent a population as a whole, which, in this case, would be the population of Haiti, as we know that the characters she portrayed were Haitian.
The way she broke up her novel into nine separate but connected stories was also an interesting format choice. This can do a few different things for the story. For one, it can let us into multiple different characters’ mindsets. Instead of having the story be told by one specific character, only ever seeing the story from that one person’s point of view, the readers get to see the story from multiple sides. Because of this, it is hard to see a clear villain in the story. We can see the way multiple characters think about themselves and about others in the story, and it can serve to make us feel compassionate and sympathetic toward characters that might otherwise be seen as villains. In the same way, it can lead us to garner some negative opinions about seemingly heroic characters, especially if we get those opinions from the heroic character’s point of view. Another thing that this can do for a story is engage its readers. Vera Tobin, an assistant professor of cognitive science at Case Western Reserve University, makes the case for plot twists in an article for The Conversation. She combines scientific research on the human brain with literary knowledge to provide a full scope of information. In her article, she talks about when a story feels incomplete, and a reader can’t guess how it will end, they are more likely to make it all the way through. The twists in the story also serve to pull everything together, and while satisfying the readers’ curiosity, can still make them think (Tobin, 2018).
The genre Danticat chose for her story was also important when it comes to how her readers viewed the story. Because the genre she chose was fiction, there was a lot of wiggle room for her to use in the weaving of her story. It could have gone in almost any direction, any direction that was feasible for the human life and mindset to go in. She wasn’t stuck in the same type of narrative box that Kalidasa was stuck in. Kalidasa had to move within his audience’s expectations to ensure that it was received well. There needed to be elements of romance paired with lighthearted comedy and a happy ending. While Danticat’s readers, on the other hand, did not go into the story with any set expectations about where the plotline would lead. In this way, genre worked in Danticat’s favor.
In conclusion, the way a story is told, and the way the audience views it, sets the tone for them. The genre of a story lets the audience know what they are getting into, but it can also limit the author’s method of storytelling. When an author is operating inside an intensely specific genre, there are only so many ways the story can progress. Because of this, while genre can be important to storytelling itself, I do not believe that it is necessarily important to the story. The format of a story, though, is very important to both storytelling and the story itself. There is a tangible difference when the audience can see the characters and how they react to different situations, and when they are just reading the words off a page. In this way, I believe that Kalidasa’s play, and all plays that are read instead of seen performed, are limited. We did not get the experience he intended, as we were just reading the script and the stage directions. Seeing the play performed in the manner he intended would have set up the story in a different way. The story elements that the author chooses to employ are also incredibly important to storytelling. They make the story come to life, and tie everything together. Both genre and format are important to storytelling, just in different ways and capacities.
Works Cited
Danticat, Edwidge. The Dew Breaker. Vintage Books, 2005.
Kālidāsa, and W. J. Johnson. The Recognition of Śakuntalā: A Play in Seven Acts: Śakuntalā in the mahābhārata (mahābhārata 1.62-9). Oxford University Press, 2008.
Tobin, Vera. “The Science of the Plot Twist: How Writers Exploit Our Brains.” The Conversation, 31 July 2020, https://theconversation.com/the-science-of-the-plot-twist-how-writers-exploit-our-brains-95748.
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