By Actions

“Look, it’s understandable. You didn’t want to hurt her, did you?”

“No, I—”

“Those things happen. You lose your temper, you get upset, things happen fast, you didn’t mean to do it but things got out of hand. There was a rock nearby—”…. (125)

The interrogation is twenty-nine pages long, almost one-fifth of this book. In this conversation, the readers see the vulnerability of Jason and the craftiness of Trent.

Via dialogues, the story reaches the climax in which Jason finally makes a false confession of killing that girl, as well as the characterization of both protagonists (or Jason the protagonist, and Trent the antagonist).

4.2.3. By Actions

Lodge’s division of “telling” and “showing” is discussed earlier; to sum up, the author’s comments are telling whereas other characters’ comments as well as conversation are showing. They are all in one category: characterization by discourses.

In this section, another showing technique in fiction will be discussed; that is, characterization by actions. Although making conversation can also be regarded as an action, the focus here will be free of any dialogues.

Perhaps a character’s actions in fiction are the most attractive part to the readers, particularly to the young ones. The actions make a story more interesting and fast-paced. And the actions are interwoven with the characters and the plot: characters bring out the actions, and these actions constitute the whole plot. Brooks and Penn Warren mention that “ ‘action’ serves as a rough equivalent of what we commonly think of a ‘plot’ ” (33). However, Brooks and Penn Warren give the definition of

“action” and “plot” to clarify that they are different: action indicates that “a series of events having unity and significance” (509), while plot means “the structure of action as presented in fiction or drama; it is one aspect of the total design of a story” (514).

Here we focus on the relationship between the characters and their actions. How do the characters in fiction reveal their personalities by actions?

Taking one of three vicious characters in The Chocolate War, Emile, as an example, Lukens and Cline illustrate how the characterization by Emile’s actions works:

When first the reader meets Emile, “he was siphoning gas from a car, watching it flow into a gas jug. Emile giggled.” He is getting his “gas for the week.” Cormier tells us Emile is “an animal, and he doesn’t play [football] by the rules.” He “reaches” people by “whistling softly so that it got on the teacher’s nerves, a barely perceptible whistle that could drive a teacher up the wall. That’s why Emile Janza reversed the usual process…. (10)

By now, the readers have a vivid image of Emile, and his wicked personality appears during these descriptions of his actions. Not only Emile, another evil character Brother Leon also has his own word-pictures. For example, in both The

Chocolate War and Beyond the Chocolate War, Brother Leon uses his position as a teacher to manipulate students by giving them a pass or fail grade:

Brother Leon and his evil pass-fail tests. The kinds of tests that kept students on edge. Questions with ambiguous answers, answers that called for the educated guesses. As a result, Leon in complete command of the results. Could pass or fail students at will. No other teacher did this.

Worst of all, Leon used the tests for his own purposes. Brought students into his classroom for discussions of the probable results. (235)

The readers might think that Brother Leon is worse than Emile because he is a teacher and priest. And his evil characteristics are established and revealed by the author Cormier. The author gives the readers a reason to learn which one(s) should be admired and which one(s) should be disdained.

Interestingly, among Cormier’s fifteen young adult novels, the vicious or wicked characters are more unforgettable than the good ones. The wicked ones act strangely, abnormally and terrifyingly. A noticeable example is Eric in Tenderness, who is the protagonist but an evil one—a serial killer. When Eric was a boy, he found fun in killing small animals, such as birds, and received a sense of tenderness. After he grew up to be a teen, he murdered his mother and step-father, and then three teenage girls. Cormier describes how Eric kills a mouse while in the facility:

He reached out and snatched the tiny rodent, not surprised that it was so easy. It was as if the mouse knew its fate and was sacrificing itself. The pulse of the small body beat softly against the flesh of Eric’s palm. The nose twittered, the body twitched. Despite the loneliness that he knew

would be the result of his actions, he gently, lovingly squeezed, seeking the tenderness. (71)

Such a scene of Eric’s cruelty sends a chill up the readers’ spines. But Eric has changed gradually after he meets Lori and began a journey. When he learns that Lori might know his secret, he decides to kill her one night: “He held the pillow in front of him like a shield. He had done his mother this way. Seemed like the kindest way to do it—you did not see the face during the struggle” (188). Lori suddenly wakes up; at first she is scared then she gives up: “closing her eyes, she sighed. ‘Go ahead, then.

Do it.’ He lowered the pillow, stood uncertainly beside her bed….he let the pillow drop to the floor” (189).

Why does Eric change his mind, even his attitude, toward Lori? Cormier spends more than one hundred pages to present their journey, mainly by actions and dialogues, to tell the readers how they develop their dangerous liaison. At last Eric takes a boating trip with Lori, but it ends in an accident in which Lori drowns in a lake. The police arrest Eric and accuse him of killing her on purpose. Eric is sent to prison. In the last scene, the readers read this passage: “the worse image of all, the one he dreaded but could not prevent: the way she clung to him at the last moment in the waters of the lake: Love me, Eric. Eric touched his cheek, finding moisture there—was this what crying was like? Later, in the deepest heart of the night, the monster also cried” (229).

Eric’s personality is displayed by his actions; so is his change. This character gives the readers a very impressive image because Cormier makes Eric act like a cold-blooded monster. Nevertheless, his last action, crying in the middle of the night, seems reasonable and more human. Lukens and Cline argue that “we have come to expect that an experience—action—may cause change….Character, or who and what

the person is, influences action. And once involved in the action, the person may either experience change or remain unchanged” (13-14). In this case, Eric’s journey with Lori does change him, and this change makes the readers feel more comfortable, for the reason that they know that people can change for the better.

Chapter 5 Narrative

The focus of this chapter is how a story, also called a narrative, is told and organized by an author. The study of a narrative is called narratology, which some researchers regard as a branch of structuralism. A Glossary of Literary Terms defines narrative as “[A] narrative is a story, whether told in prose or verse, involving events, characters, and what the characters say and do” (181). And narratology “denotes a concern, which became prominent in the mid-twentieth century, with the general theory and practice of narrative in all literary forms” (181). This chapter will discuss three aspects of a narrative: narrative order, point of view/ perspective and narrator.

5.1. Narrative Order

A narrative usually involves the reference of time. However, not every story is told straightforwardly corresponding with the actual time at which every event really happens. Many writers organize their stories by the causality of events, not by the sequence of time. E. M. Forster mentions that “a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality” (87). For the sake of causality, a writer usually arranges some events in a flashback or a flash forward order. There are three narrative orders discussed below, including chronological order, flashback and flash forward.

5.1.1. Chronological Order

Chronological order is a narrative arranged in order of time. Even if not all events of a whole story are told strictly in order of time, this kind of order is still a main feature of a narrative. Lukens and Cline argue that many stories are arranged in a strict chronological order, including Sollace Hotze’s A Circle Unbroken, Tessa Duder’s In Lane Three, Alex Archer, and so forth (32). Lukens and Cline also argue that even though there may be two events happening at the same time, to demonstrate one event after another does not disturb the time order, these two events are still regarded as chronological.

Via analyzing Cormier’s young adult fiction, the researcher finds that in The Chocolate War and the sequel Beyond the Chocolate War, Cormier mainly follows the time order, confirming Lukens and Cline’s argument that “the touchstones chosen for close examination in this text, The Chocolate War…move in chronological order, showing one event following another” (32). Indeed, in these two novels, Cormier has every chapter move by the time sequence and from different points of view. For example, the first chapter is about the protagonist Jerry who is playing football at school. The time sequence is chronological and the point of view belongs to Jerry. In chapter two, the point of view turns to Obie, who is a right-hand man of the antagonist Archie. However, in the very first line of this novel, Cormier writes: “THEY MUDERED HIM.”, which makes the whole story more like a flashback, or so-called

“analeptic” (“back-take”) because Cormier writes the final result first, then goes back to narrate and explain it.

A similar case is the time order in Beyond the Chocolate War. Since this novel is the sequel to The Chocolate War, it is inevitable that it will recall much of the plot from the first novel. For example, as Jerry and his friend, the Goober, talk on the

phone before Jerry returns to Trinity High, they talk about that terrible fight that happened at the end of the first novel, The Chocolate War. The Goober says,

“…let me tell you that I know that I betrayed you last fall. Stayed home as if I was sick when you were going through hell because of the chocolates, that beating from Janza…” (150). Then Cormier lets Jerry answer, “ ‘But you were there, Goob. I saw you. You helped me….’ He almost said: You held me in your arms when I was all broken inside and out” (150).

This makes the story flow not only in chronological order, but also in a flashback order too. Sometimes a flashback is put in a dialogue between characters or a memory of certain character, and sometimes in a comment or a description by the author.

With respect to the narrative skills, the researcher argues that among Cormier’s fifteen works for young adults, at least two books have a relatively complicated narrative structure in terms of the narrative order. They are I Am the Cheese, and After the First Death. Both of them are among Cormier’s early works. In I Am the Cheese, Cormier arranges three levels of narratives in one story, involving the narrative order of flash forward, which will be discussed in section 5.1.3. On the other hand, the narrative order of After the First Death is flashback, which will be discussed in the next section.

Compared to Cormier’s early works, the researcher finds that there is a clear chronological order in this three novellas, Other Bells for us to Ring, Tunes for Bears to Dance To, and Heroes, in which Campbell claims that “the style…much more straightforward than previous Cormier’s works” (Campbell 1: 175). These three books are written for younger adolescents, so they contain fewer characters, more explicit themes (e.g., guilt vs. forgiveness), and more linear narrative structures. The same situation happens in Cormier’s three psychological thrillers published in the

1990s, We All Fall Down, In the Middle of the Night and Tenderness. Although these three novels have more pages, they all have a faster pace and a more straightforward narrative order than Cormier’s early young adult novels such as I Am the Cheese or After the First Death. Why? The researcher argues that Cormier did not regard himself as a writer for young adults in the first place even though the publisher put his works into the YA category. However, as he gradually recognized that many teenagers loved his books, perhaps he changed his style slightly. For example, he started using fewer metaphors and similes, and giving his novels a more straightforward structure.

The advantages of using a chronological order are as follows: 1) this narrative order corresponds with the human concept of time, since for people time always flows in a chronological order. And 2) it is easier for the writer to recount the events in a narrative. Nevertheless, there is the disadvantage of using a chronological order that it is possible to provide the reader with a direct but relatively dull story.

5.1.2. Flashback

David Lodge argues that “through time-shift, narrative avoids presenting life as just one damn thing after another, and allows us to make connections of causality and irony between widely separated events. A shift of narrative focus back in time may change our interpretation of something which happened much later in the chronology of the story, but which we have already experienced as readers of the text. This is a familiar device of cinema, the flashback” (75). According to Gerard Genette, flashback, also called analepsis, has two categories: 1) completing flashback (return), which comprises the retrospective sections that fill in, after the event, an early gap in a narrative (51), and 2) repeating flashback (recall), which means this part of a

narrative goes back to retrace its own path (54). In Cormier’s After the First Death, the first section is the protagonist Ben’s monologue about his body, which was wounded last summer but has now healed. Ben tells the readers that “I am typing this in the room at Castle and it’s beautiful here as I write this. Through the window, I can see the quadrangle and the guys indulging in a snow ball fight...and then I thought of the kids on the bus, strewn around like broken toys while the guns went off.…” (4-5) The story begins with the protagonist Ben’s present time, but soon he returns to the event he encountered, the school bus hijacking. In part two of this novel, this central event is demonstrated to the readers. Part two is a flashback of the entire event, and this kind of flashback is regarded as a completing flashback, also called a return—the story “returns” to the time of the main plot (the bus hijacking), and its function is to add the details that the story has not mentioned before in order to complete the whole story.

This novel has two levels of narratives, which are Ben’s present story and the bus hijacking. Campbell concludes that “the second level, the Kate-Miro [the bus driver and one of the hijackers] narrative, takes up three times as many pages as the Ben-general [Ben’s father] sections and is the main device for telling the story”

(Campbell 1: 122). Based on this, the researcher assumes that the completing flashback can be a central part of a narrative, and can even take its own stand; that is to say, an entire story can be a completing flashback. If this narrative goes along with a present-time plot line (like the Ben-general sections in After the First Death), it can be regarded as a completing flashback; if not, this narrative will be a complete story in chronological order.

Different from the completing flashback (return), the second kind of flashback, the repeating flashback (recall), happens more frequently. For example, in Cormier’s collection of short stories 8 Plus 1, each story has one or more repeating flashback

scenes as recalls. For instance, in the first story, “The Moustache”, the protagonist seventeen-year-old, Mike, recalls his relationship with his grandmother while driving to a nursing home to visit her. Mike also thinks about his girlfriend Cindy as he drives.

Each recall is only a few lines, not like the completing flashback in After the First Death which is almost two hundred pages. Moreover, these recalls cannot be another complete story; they are in the same plot line as the main one (i.e., Mike’s visit). In the second story, “Mine on Thursdays”, a divorced father Howie takes his daughter Holly to a playground one day, and he recalls that he had an affair with a model, so his wife divorced him. Now he can meet his daughter only on Thursdays. Such flashbacks give the readers some background details, but are not a central part of a whole story.

Even in Cormier’s longer novellas or novels, there are many repeating flashbacks, even though these stories are in chronological order. For example, the protagonist Francis in Heroes constantly recalls the war (World War II) he went through; sometimes he dreams about it:

I find myself in a narrow alley, groping through rising dust, and two German soldiers in white uniforms appear like grim ghosts, rifles coming up, but my automatic is too quick and the head of one of the soldiers explodes like a ripe tomato and the other cries Mama as my gunfire cuts him in half, both halves of him tumbling to the ground…. (29)

Another example is that the protagonist Eric, in Tenderness, recalls those girls whom he killed as he stays in the facility:

Although he never dreamed, he spent sweet moments in his bed, curled up as if in his mother’s womb, eyes half closed, summoning from the past certain moments with his girls—Laura and Betty Ann and Alicia.

Moments of intimacy and ecstasy and a piercing tenderness that became an ache within him. But a sweet ache, which he could not resist inviting into the pale thing his life became…. (66)

The paragraphs above are very terrifying. Their point that is to “trace their own path” in order to provide the readers with vivid images and more specific information about the characters. After we read these passages, we may sympathize with Francis or resent Eric. The researcher argues that the function of repeating flashbacks, or recalls, is to make a story more reasonable and colorful, whereas the main function of completing flashbacks, or returns, is to uncover a story happening in the past, but related to the present.

5.1.3. Flash Forward

Genette calls a flash forward a “temporal prolepsis”, which means “a disruption in chronology that anticipates or prefigures the future” (The Harper Handbook to Literature 377). Compared to flashbacks, flash forwards are less frequently used in both novels and films. Genette argues that “anticipation, or temporal prolepsis, is

Genette calls a flash forward a “temporal prolepsis”, which means “a disruption in chronology that anticipates or prefigures the future” (The Harper Handbook to Literature 377). Compared to flashbacks, flash forwards are less frequently used in both novels and films. Genette argues that “anticipation, or temporal prolepsis, is