Response to Question #5

Richard Paez

LIT 3003: "The Forms of Narrative: Narratology of New Media"

Saturday, April 16, 2005

This is the first word of this essay. On page 6, line 11, is its terminal punctuation mark. Between these boundaries, the here-now and the then-there, is a body of text which serves, as much as it does any other purpose, to delineate the difference between its beginning and its ending. Similarly, printed narratives, and the artifacts which contain them, seem(1) to have circumference, perimeter:

In Aristotle’s era, however, a narrative’s plot was inseparable from its medium. Written stories which seemed to have narrative starts and finishes were read from scrolls which had distinct material edges; dramas, both narratively and materially, began at certain well-defined points in time and ended at equally well-defined moments. Since the medium of a narrative was seen as its vessel, it was natural for readers to perceive the story contained by an artifact as sharing the limitations (boundaries) of its container.

Digital artifacts, however, have no covers, no orderly progression of roman numerals ("act II, scene 3"), no box. Even in a digital text where the "pages" on the screen appear materially similar to the pages encountered in a codex, the lack of boundaries is made manifest:

The medium of digital narratives such as hypertext fiction and video games is a revealing disjunct to the illusion of narrative beginnings and endings in print texts. Authors of digital narratives focus on this breakdown of narrative linearity and textual containment, explicitly pointing out that this breakdown is only highlighted by digital hypertext—it applies, and has always applied, just as well to narratives in printed texts:

Digital narratives exist without the manifest boundaries of the print codex, without the temporal boundaries of the stage drama, and thus reveal that reading is not a linear action, but a circular, recursive, recombinant interaction. Examining a game-narrative such as Myst exposes the reality that endings in narrative (including those artificially contained in bound artifacts) are, as Joyce contends, "suspect qualities;" they are more matters of reader choice than of authorial intent or narrative tradition, more dependant on reading style than physical boundaries or temporal limitations.

Myst begins in medias res. Within moments of the narrative’s beginning, we learn that much has gone on before—we find Atrus’ note to his wife Catherine, informing her that he has left her a message of "utmost importance," implying that things have not been well on Myst Island. The note contains instructions on how to use the "imager" in which the message is stored. The note directs the reader how to read the text (Figure 1): find the marker switches by exploring the island. Unlocking the imager (Figure 1) reveals some of what went on before: the reader discovers that Atrus’ books, presumably similar to the book which brought the player’s avatar into the world of Myst, have been destroyed, and he suspects one of his sons. Atrus’ message hints at the use of the "tower rotation," which enables the reader to uncover the clues needed to access the "places of protection" where the linking books, Myst’s equivalent of chapter breaks, are hidden. Thus, beginning in medias res gives the course of the narrative a trajectory: the reader’s avatar must find Atrus, who is set to return at an unspecified time and who holds the knowledge of the books. Doing so will require exploration of the island, following in the footsteps that Catherine would have followed had she found the note addressed to her, and during the course of the journey discover who destroyed Atrus’ library.

In many respects, this is the plot of a standard discovery-thriller or detective story. The plot, or fabula, can be constructed the same way a standard table of contents is structured (Appendix 1). Furthermore, the placement of the note in the narrative, as well as the message from Atrus (during which the avatar is addressed as Catherine), places the avatar in the role of the mother mediating between husband in sons, thus recalling the Oedipal formula. The story begins (at least for the reader) with the involvement of the avatar, the actor through which the narrative is focalized and through whom the reader (player) explores (reads) the narrative (see Paez, Response to Question #1). The beginning—the first chapter or act of the story—is remarkably similar to the beginning of Film Noir detective dramas. As one would learn watching the beginning of Ridley Scott’s modern Noir classic Blade Runner, the reader of Myst is learns about the diegesis. We are familiarized with the environmental-situation (the workings or mechanics of the world—in Blade Runner, a futuristic but familiar urban sprawl, in Myst, a depopulated island filled with riddles and puzzles left behind by an enigmatic and absent father-figure), the characters (in Myst, Atrus and his sons, Sirrus and Achenar, as well as the mother Catherine, in whose role the avatar seems to be playing), and the mystery.

Atrus’ sons, the suspects, provide the reader with the clue to solving the mystery: the avatar must unlock each of the four linking books, thus acquiring access to each of the four other ages or chapters. Within each age the avatar must recover a page for each of the brothers—it seems four pages are needed to fix the linking books the brother are trapped in. Each age is a trap in of itself, and requires that the avatar solve the puzzles which will allow return to Myst Island. Thus the "middle" of Myst is made up of four chapters, each involving exploration, discovery, and escape. During the avatar’s stay in each age, however, clues are found that cast suspicion on both brothers. Achenar, who seems insane from the beginning, is violent and obsessed with death—skulls and weapons fill his chambers on each age. Sirrus, who seems at first his brother’s victim, is greedy and obsessed with power, as evidenced by the maps, gold, and other trappings of aristocracy in his rooms. Upon discovering Achenar’s projection device in the Channelwood age, the avatar learns that Sirrus and Achenar are in fact in league with each other. On the device Sirrus has left a message for Achenar—"He is preparing. Remember, take only one page, my brother"—implying that Atrus, like his sons, is trapped in a yet-discovered linking book.

The end of the narrative is approached once the avatar has brought at least one of the brothers four of the linking pages. It is now that the avatar is told that there is a fifth and final page needed to free the brother, hidden behind the library’s fireplace. Above the red and blue pages is the missing linking book to Dunny, in which Atrus is found, trapped like his sons and speaking to the avatar through a window in the page. Atrus informs the avatar that he must bring a yellow page to him to free him. Thus the avatar has four choices (Figure 2), each leading to one of four possible "endings"—link to Dunny with the page, link to Dunny without the page, or free one of the two brothers.

Freeing either of the two brothers results in a functionally similar ending: the avatar, instead of freeing the brother, switches places with him, thus leaving the avatar trapped and the brother free. If the avatar links to Dunny without the yellow page Atrus is rightly upset—without the yellow page needed to repair his Myst linking book, both he and the avatar are trapped on Dunny for eternity. In all three cases, the narrative stops—the cursor which serves as the avatar’s connection to the world disappears, the screen goes blank. Most readers, reaching either of these three endings, will "go back" to the moment of choice (load a saved game). From there, the avatar will find the yellow page and link to Dunny with it, freeing Atrus from Dunny without being trapped there. Atrus links to Myst, destroys his treacherous son’s prison books (trapping them in those ages forever), and returns, thanking the avatar, and granting the reward for his freedom: free access to Myst and the ages that connect from it. In this case, the narrative arc of the game has come to what seems a satisfactory conclusion: Atrus tells the avatar the true story of Myst, the detective work is done and justice is served.

However, both the "losing" scenarios and the "winning scenario" illustrate the difficulty in ascribing an "end" to the narrative of Myst. The narration ends, as Michael Joyce indicates in afternoon, when the reader accepts the loss, quits the game, or gets tired of exploring Myst Island after freeing Atrus. The narrative itself, however, has no clear-cut ending. In the example of a losing ending, the reader can go back, make new choices, and thus continue the avatar’s story. In the winning case, there is no formal punctuation mark (a period, "fin") to indicate that the game (or story) is "over." To the contrary, Atrus asks the avatar to not stray too far, stating that he is facing a far greater foe and will need to request the avatar’s help soon. Furthermore, the story described above it but one possible reading, formulated from fabula elements discovered during one reading of the text. It is possible to play the game several times or to continue playing it after achieving the winning "ending," and thus discover new fabula elements (clues, puzzles) which add to the narrative, discover those elements in different orders, or not discover elements encountered during a previous reading.

Unlike the perception of narratives in Aristotle’s era, perception of narratives in the modern era does not easily allow for the possibility of fixed beginnings or endings. As the computer, itself a "general-purpose recombinatorial device" (Harpold, Digital Narrative 1), is used more frequently and more effectively in the generation, propagation, and reception of narratives, narratives themselves are more and more recognized as recombinatorial structures by their authors and audiences. This is not to say that narration, or individual narratives, have no end. Instead, the much more complex reality is that endings, while they exist, are not final—there is no terminal point, no period-mark, where one can say a narrative has been fully consumed, completely digested, or entirely passed.

(1) There are many texts which have circumvented this apparent limitation in printed artifacts. Combinational works, such as Marc Saporta’s Composition No. 1, a Novel, an unbound novel whose loose pages are designed so that they may be shuffled before reading (resulting in one narrative work which contains a set number of fabula elements that can be recombined into a large number of story arrangements), and Raymond Queneau’s Cent mille milliards de poèmes, a collection of fourteen sonnets with interchangeable lines (resulting in 14x14=11,112,006,825,558,016 sonnets), transcend the limits of their medial constraints. The use of intertextual connections to distort the apparently concrete perimeters of print texts is a common practice but not a new one, as illustrated by the vast range and depth of connectives in Richard Burton’s 1638 Anatomy of Melancholy, a work composed almost entirely of such allusive structures.

07/08/2006

Posted on 07/08/2006
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