Plot Snakes and the Dynamics of Narrative Experience

Our dreams, our myths, our history, even our lives are stories, writes the author of this text, and the plots of these stories have been misunderstood since the time of Aristotle. Claiming that the traditional shape of a plot as a pyramid is inaccurate, she declares that all stories parallel a full human life, one that embodies the psychological stages of birth, psychic autonomy, puberty adulthood, midlife crisis or transition, and death. The line from birth to death is our narrative universe, she says, and she represents this movement with the curving of form a snake. The energy that drives a plot corresponds to the human energy that creates points of order and disorder along the body of this universe. All of this is grounded in concrete texts. Addressing anything that may be said to have a plot, including psychology, history, sociology, philosophy, and especially literary forms such as novels, situation comedies, fairy tales, films and theatre (with special emphasis on Shakespeare's plays), she finds the plot snake in every kind of narrative.