Plowman passus 1
To me, a mystery story is a story that involves any sort of detective, not necessarily a professional like Holmes, an issue that needs to be solved, and suspects. These components of what I believe build a mystery story can all come in very different forms, so I honestly don't think that there are very strict rules as to what mystery is. As we've talked about in class, I think an important, but not necessarily crucial aspect of a good mystery story is evidence. This allows the reader to follow along with the story and gives context as to how the detectives solve the issue at hand. Evidence in a story can appear in such distinct, abstract ways, which is also why its so difficult to define exactly what a mystery story is. In my opinion, a crime story is often a mystery story, but a mystery story is definitely not always a crime story. For these reason, I don't agree with everything Auden says; I think that a mystery story has many components that help make it a good story but also not everyone agrees on which of these components are necessarily required. Therefore, I believe that a mystery story can be different for every person depending on their own opinions.
To be completely honest, I really didn't understand a lot of what was going on in Passus 1 because of the extremely difficult language that Plowman uses. From what I could understand, I saw a lot of Biblical allusions that definitely gave me at least a little bit more context of the story. I definitely see a slight connection between this story and Holmes in the way that the protagonists questions help guide the story and allow the reader to follow along as they receive the answers from another, more informed character. Passus 1 definitely was confusing, but the woman's explanations of everything that the man asked her about were slightly helpful in understanding the backdrop of the story. Other than this aspect which I guess could relate to the question of "what constitutes evidence", I honestly do not see a connection between this and a mystery story yet. I could feel the mysterious atmosphere in which the story takes place, so hopefully I will begin to see the mystery in the story as I read further.
I also had a hard time understanding the novel but I feel like there won't be any sort of detective in this story. I guess I could see that a mystery might be developing in the plot, but I think it will be very unclear what the presented evidence is and what exactly the characters/readers are trying to figure out. Maybe the mystery will end up being more broad and in terms of why the author chose to present the story the way he did. Instead of trying to figure out a fictional mystery, we could investigate the physical book and the author's choices.
ReplyDeleteI like how you detail the specific components of traditional mystery stories, but I am not entirely sure that you tackle the question of what the mystery is- some sort of question or dilemma in my opinion, that is central to the plot. But I think you do a really good job of laying out the featured components, something that I did not even think to mention. Also, astute to pick up on all the Biblical references. I too had trouble with the language, but hopefully it will get a little better. Overall, very interesting blog post.
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