Plowman Passus 2

Typically, a mystery story centers around finding the solution for a single, usually criminal, conflict. Unlike in a crime story, the author normally does not place so much emphasis on the criminal himself (and stopping him), but rather how the detective managed to determine his identity. What separates them from, say, thrillers, dramas, or other plot-driven genres is how information is presented. Unlike a traditional story, where the action is told chronologically and cohesively, a mystery story explains the story in fragments, in a ambiguous order, and with no assurance that any conclusion can be taken at face value. Neither the reader nor the main protagonist/detective knows the full picture, which creates suspense and skepticism about where the plot is headed.

Mystery in a Story, in my opinion, involves taking this uncertainty of the truth and applying it to a narrative that does not have a criminal conflict. It is the tactic of obscuring the truth and fiddling with the reliability of characters and credibility of events to such an extent that readers are forced to think cautiously, as if they were reading a mystery.

So far, Piers Plowman does not strike me as a mystery story, and I doubt that it can, so far, be considered a "Mystery in the Story" either. Chapter 2 introduced what appears to be the first major conflict in the story: the marriage of Mede. Honestly, I am really unsure of how all characters of vice like False and Flattery fit in with the Christian religion expressed in this text. It is clear that God/Satan and Truth/False are two separate ideas, but still that leaves a lot of confusion. Are these characters demons related to Satan or personifications of human vices? And how is a king so powerful that he can order troops to cause "False" to flee?

Back to my point ... the story of Mede's attempted marriage with False is told pretty linearly; and even with my inability to comprehend most of the language, I could tell that the story was cohesive, and I have not yet been given any reason to doubt what Holy Church claims to be true. Because the truth is not obscured, I think of this story more as an interesting drama than an actual mystery. Furthermore, according to Auden, the characters present within a mystery story are not black and white, but rather have their own secrets that make them seem guilty. In this story, with characters that literally personify malicious intent like False and his minions, is it not obvious that they are going to be the villains? As the story progresses, I might start to notice elements in Piers Plowman that make it a mystery, but right now, I don't think it is.