"Why a Duck?"
Sue Grafton says, ". . .mystery writers are the magicians of fiction. We're the illusionists, working with sleight of hand in the performance of our art. . .. Keep in mind that the mystery is the one form in which the reader and the writer are pitted against each other" (3). Just as an illusionist must at all costs keep and (mis-) direct the attention of the audience, so the mystery writer tries with might and main to control and arrest the attention of the reader. It is intrinsic to the successful mystery that the writer do this. He cannot assume the automatic goodwill of the reader; he cannot assume the reader will sustain "the willing suspension of disbelief" just because literary convention says she must. The sine qua non of a good mystery is the stringing along of the reader till the last 'i' is dotted and the last 't' is crossed and order is restored. Not only must the writer "string the reader along," but he must, in a sense, consider the reader an adversary whom he has to mislead and deceive, because as the writer's protagonist follows the clues to the solution of the crime, the reader likewise reads the same trail of evidence and tries to find the solution before the protagonist does (and before the writer discloses it). That's one aspect of the fun of reading detective fiction. Mystery writers are "Conjurers and painters of the trompe l'oeil [who] school concentrate on acquiring a virtuosity whose only reward is reached after the viewer detects that he has been deceived and is forced to smile or marvel at the skill of the deceiver" (Bateson 182).
God -in the Judeo-Christian tradition - was depicted as the first detective, wasn't She? - when, according to the Book of Genesis in the Bible, She solved the mystery of how Adam and Eve acquired the knowledge of the tree of good and evil: "Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat? And the man said, The woman thou gavest me to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the woman What (is) this (that) thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me and I did eat" (Genesis 3: 11-13). God got to the bottom of the crime and meted out his justice (banishment from Eden). God also solved the mystery of the murder of Abel by Cain: "And Cain talked with his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said I know not; Am I my brother's keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground" (Genesis 4:8-10). Cain acted like a guilty person in denying he knew where Abel was, just as Adam did when he passed the blame to Eve. Why does the writer of Genesis have God interrogating Adam and then Cain? Doesn't God already know the answer? I think the writer does this in the interests of a good story because everyone likes a good mystery story. In a mystery, remember, the protagonist assumes a god-like role because it is his job to pinpoint how the normal order has been disturbed (the crime), to determine who has transgressed against the moral order (the criminal), and to restore law and order and to bring the transgressor to justice.
Right from the very beginning of studying a mystery, important ethical principles present themselves to be examined. Research on the adolescent brain SEEMS to show that many of the behaviors stereotypical of teens, such as lack of impulse control and risk-taking behavior, are due to the fact that the teen brain has not matured organically, and so in a sense teens cannot do otherwise. But the cerebellum ". . .is not genetically controlled and is thus susceptible to the environment. . . [is]not essential for any activity. . .but it makes any activity better. Anything we can think of as higher thought, mathematics, music, philosophy, decision-making, social skill, draws upon the cerebellum. . ..To navigate the complicated social life of the teen and to get through these things instead of lurching seems to be a function of the cerebellum" (Giedd). So at a very fundamental level, a mystery provides healthful food for thought for a developing brain. "The protagonist must have a code that is adhered to no matter what the costs or consequences. He must protect this code like a mother protecting a child. In his code is his character. The detective cannot state his code to the reader" (Grafton, 61). The protagonist serves as a model of directed behavior for impulse- buffeted tenth graders. So, one of the objectives of reading a mystery becomes clear: to discover the personal code by which the protagonist lives. Robin Winks adds another important lesson to be gleaned from detective fiction. "Detective fiction - all of it - tells us at least one simple message, though a message complex enough that most very young children and some adults do not grasp it: actions have consequences. . .. Inaction. . .is no less significant" (Winks19). Sara Paretsky's V.I Warshawski,for example, must do something or run the risk of losing at least her livelihood, if not her good name, not to mention her freedom even her life in Hard Time.
A detective story limns all the elements of a literary work in bold face. So it becomes much easier to discern and recognize the literary elements that comprise any novel. The learning of all these elements is an important goal of the school curriculum. This unit seeks to achieve all of the goals as outlined in the curriculum guide. I hope that my students will gain a firm grasp on all of the elements of a novel and, as well, that they will acquire facility in the exercising of higher orders of thinking as Bloom has described them (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) (Bloom).
Author's Purpose
One of the important aims of the writer in a mystery story is obvious. It is to write a story in which a crime takes place and to lead the reader along as the protagonist struggles to unravel the mystery of who committed the crime. From the beginning the reader watches the protagonist follow the clues till he finds the solution. The reader not only observes, but engages his wits as well to try to solve the crime. The author's job is to play fair so that the reader has access to the same information as the protagonist, but not so that the reader can solve the crime before the climax of the story. "The classic detective story involves first the planting and then the concealing of clues" (Wheat 123). The writer creates "red herrings" which are meant to take the reader away from the real culprit. Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot mentions that many characters can seem guilty because they are all guilty of something: "Each of you has something to hide. [Christie's emphasis] Come now, am I right?" (Christie 122) The author's purpose is to create and maintain suspense so that the reader is a happy victim of the writer's literary legerdemain.
Plot
"The first rule of mystery writing can be stated simply: The plot is everything. All other aspects of the book must be slaves to the story line. A solid reason behind this rule is that most readers come to a mystery because the genre promises an actual story, a characteristic that many find lacking in so-called mainstream fiction. . ..There are also requirements peculiar to the genre: clues, red herrings, the tying up of loose ends
(Grafton 7, 2). To follow and outline the plot and its elements therefore becomes an easy task for the student reader: exposition, rising action, climax, denouement and resolution. There may be sub-plots which give a full dimension to the mystery as occurring to real people in real time while this mysterious occurrence has intruded on their lives which must continue to be lived even as the mystery envelopes them. But still the plot of a mystery story demands that the crime be solved no matter what else happens during the pursuit of the solution. Kindness Goes Unpunished involves Walt Longmire in trying to find out first who hurt his daughter and then in finding out who is responsible for the killing of Devon Conliffe. There are delightful sub-plots in the story, but bringing the murderer to justice is the main plot.
Characterization
The characters in a mystery novel are usually vivid. Students will have little difficulty in relating to them and in deciphering their apparent motivation. The protagonist is very human; the reader can easily identify with him because of his humanness: maybe he drinks too much, maybe her personal life is in shambles, maybe her family is less than ideal. Michael Connelly gives this advice to mystery writers, "Character is defined by quality not quantity. . .. Most of the time, less is more. . .. I call these the 'telling' details of character. They are the nuances that create an empathic strike between your character and reader. . .. One telling detail will take you further than a page of description. . .. Character is conflict. . .. The writer's task is to deliver a set of full-blooded characters to the reader. In particular, the protagonist. As discussed above, you do that with actions, personal nuances, and the telling details of his world" (Connelly 58-59, 62). A writer who lives up to this advice will present, for student readers, characters that are readily understandable through their actions and words, or through the words and actions of other characters. The protagonist in this story is Walt Longmire. "Walt. . . appeals to the reader. . .in his jaunty humor. He is a nice fellow, take it any way around, and so deserves to outwit whoever is trying to kill him" (Dunne 170). Walt and his sidekick, Henry Standing Bear, set the humorous tone of this novel. Because Walt is from the West and is now in the big city (Philadelphia), he is portrayed as in unfamiliar territory - almost a bungler - who "comments tellingly on both ordinary and criminally extraordinary behavior. . .. Always strangely childlike because of his eccentricities, he is also deeply cynical. . .. He is, perhaps, a distant cousin to the wise clowns of Shakespeare's dramas, enabling us. . . to laugh" (Bakerman 125). Henry Standing Bear deserves mention too. He is a riff on the character, Tonto, in the Lone Ranger series. Whereas Tonto was essentially characterless - "Ugh, Kemo Sabe, me think you right." Henry is a humorous, self-sufficient guy who acts at times like Walt's conscience, whose personality is interesting, independent and lively. "Native Americans . . .increasingly occupy a special place in our hearts and minds, not with soft-brained condescension but with the dignity that they and we deserve. This recognition has been a long time developing" (Browne 12-13).
Conflict
Conflict is yet another ingredient in literature and in detective fiction. Conflict includes the "big" conflict between the good guys and the bad guys which forms the substratum of a mystery. Conflict within the protagonist is common; conflict between the protagonist and his allies such as the police occurs as well Because the literary elements are WRIT LARGE in most detective fiction, students can easily identify them and need never mumble to themselves "'Tis a puzzlement."
Tone
"A mystery is more than a novel. . .. The mystery is a way of examining the dark side of human nature, a means by which we can explore, vicariously, the perplexing questions of crime, guilt and innocence, violence and justice. The mystery not only re-creates the original conditions from which violence springs, tracking the chaos that murder unleashes, but then attempts to divine the truth through the process of rational investigation and eventually restores an order to the universe" (Grafton 2). The subject matter is gruesome (usually murder), but because we experience these events "vicariously", how the crime gets told is up to the writer: in a cool, no-nonsense way by Dashiell Hammet, primly, properly, and fastidiously by Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers, brashly (with a dash of humor) by Barbara Neely, with a certain melancholy by Henning Mankell. All of these descriptors of course refer to the tone of the mystery; the protagonist's temperament and method of operating usually determine this tone, and at a still deeper level - beneath the rush and waves of the protagonist's behavior, lies the tone of suspenseful urgency - the sense that something as bad or worse will happen unless the protagonist gets a move on and solves the crime (Cavin 211). Humor is a quality that many mysteries have. How humor and murder can co-exist is explicable by the Batesonian idea of a play-frame. Once the frame is built then murder, mayhem, and chaos become acceptable scaffolding holding the frame together, and so lose their horrific immediacy. "To me, humor is anything that makes somebody laugh, somewhere, sometime," says Howard Haycraft (241).
Setting
"your setting must be rich and vivid and colorful if your mystery is to be first-rate. . .. Yes, put weather in. But don't just say it's raining. Make us feel the sodden weight of a wall of water driven by winds gusting at sixty miles an hour" (Smith 48-49). This is Julie Smith's advice to mystery writers. Setting is extraordinarily important, especially if, like me, you enjoy reading mysteries which take place in places you've visited. The setting is not quite another character, but it does indeed individualize the story so that it could only happen in that time and place. Julie Smith advises the mystery writer that the goal of setting is "to scoop up the reader on a magic carpet and take him to the world of your book" (Smith 54). The setting for Kindness Goes Unpunished becomes almost a character because Craig Johnson uses Philadelphia as an intrinsic backdrop for the story, so much so that the statuary in the city assumes an essential importance to the plot line.
The clarity with which all of these literary elements stand out in a mystery means that a student can easily perceive, understand, and analyze how they serve the author's ultimate purpose. Because the literary elements common to novels can be delineated so easily in a mystery story, my students can see and identify them and delve more deeply into other aspects of the mystery. So, in sum, the objectives of this unit are to give my students - in as undiluted form as possible - a clear idea of what each of the literary elements is and how each functions to serve the author's purpose. And, as well, I want to make the methods of the author transparent to my students. Why, for example, does the mystery we'll read begin with the protagonist, Walt Longmire, reading "Brier Rose" and "Sleeping Beauty" to a group of pre-schoolers? Using the traditional Socratic method of questioning, I would point out that Cady, as a child, loved to hear her father read these stories to her; so we can see the loving relationship that must exist between Cady and her father. The two stories - don't forget - are about a sleeping princess, saved from death, but cast under a spell of having to sleep for a long time. These stories flash forward to Cady's actual comatose state for most of the mystery. All part of the writer's craft.
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