5.2. "Zoo," If the Main Characters Knew the Theme, They Wouldn't Have to Go Through the Complications and the Climax RL2.

I am watching everybody work on their Five Finger summaries and am impressed with the general progress of the group. I am noticing a general issue with the summaries, so I thought I could save time and write a quick review lesson on it. If everybody is having the same problem, it makes sense to assume that I have not effectively explained or shown how to solve it yet.

So . . .

The problem with these summaries at this point is that they are not yet explaining how the complications and climax explain how the protagonist/main character learns the theme. A story works, is machine to deliver necessary insights about life. In a successfully plotted story story, there are no random plot events or details whatsoever. So, the plot complications and climax teach the main character how to resolve the conflict. The theme is what the person needed to understand to solve the problem.

Let's think about "The Treasure of Lemon Brown" to try and understand this better.

Greg is a kid who is arguing with his dad (external conflict) about not being able to play basketball (desire). This argument is stressing him out, because there are two values - "basketball" and "being a good son" - that are at war in his head.

So, because he's mad, he leaves the house to try and get away from the conflict. But it's raining, so he finds shelter. Because of that, he meets Lemon Brown. They start off in conflict. However, the thugs that come in show Greg and Lemon that the outside conflicts of the evils in the world require them to work together, to care about each other. The thugs attacked because they heard Lemon Brown had a "treasure." However, that treasure turns out to be newspaper clippings about his achievements that his son had with him when he died in war. Notice how weird (which in good stories, is NEVER RANDOM, but always just "weird at first") it is that Lemon Brown doesn't simply say, "Wait, you guys have it all wrong; my treasure is just some old newspaper clippings. They're worthless." He can't say that; it would betray his son's memory to call them worthless, so he chooses to face danger rather than betray his love of his son.

Now, how does all this stuff affect the conflict? It is WEIRD at first, but not RANDOM. Most students picked an acceptable theme out of the story - I think that the theme must be about parents and kids. In order to "get" the story, you have to be able to explain how the story about Lemon Brown helped Greg solve his problem in his mind.

Also, note that many, many, many fiction stories are about choosing what is most valuable in life. This is why we need these silly stories to help us live our lives. Otherwise, we will just take the values that our parents taught us (which is mostly good, but then we can never really "be" ourselves, and so we want to take our family and community values and add to them) or commercials teach us (which is bad, since it is not a soda company's job to care about us, but to sell soda, and so the values they teach us will help them, and maybe not us).

So, understand that your job in summarizing a story will require that you explain how the complications and climax allow the main character to resolve their conflict by teaching them the theme.

We're going to try it today with the great, short short story "Zoo" by Edward Hoch. Construct your summary in Google Drive.